Audra Mc Donald

Audra McDonald's talents are unmatched in the range and variety of her work as a singer, and performer. The winner of an unprecedented six Tony Awards (two Grammy Awards) as well as an Emmy Award, McDonald was included in the Time Magazine's list of 100 most influential people of 2015. In addition, she was awarded President Barack Obama's National Medal of Arts for her achievements. She's equally comfortable on television, film and Broadway. Her luminous soprano is a perfect fit for the stage. Apart from her theater work, she has an active career as a singer and a concert artist. She performs regularly in the best venues of the world. McDonald was raised within Fresno California by her musical parents. She studied classical music at the Juilliard School, New York. She was awarded her first Tony Award in 1994 for the best performance of a Featured actress in a musical, Carousel which was staged at Lincoln Center Theater. Over the next four years, she took home two additional Tony Awards for the category of featured actress. The show she was in Broadway premieres Terrence McNally's musical Ragtime as well as Terrence McNally's show Master Class in 1996. The result was an astonishing number of Tony Awards by the time she was 30. She won the fourth Tony in 2004, starring alongside Sean Diddy Combs in A Raisin in the Sun and in 2012. In 2012 she was awarded five Tonys, and the first award in the category of leading actress for her role on stage in The Gershwins Porgy and Bess as the title role. In her role as the Tony Awards' most decorated actor, she managed to create Broadway history when she was awarded her sixth Tony Award for portraying Billie Holiday as Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill. This performance also served as the basis to make her Olivier Award nominee 2017 London West End debut. Along with making history with the most performances that an actor has won in a competition she was also the first to win the award across all four categories. Her other credits for theater includes The Secret Garden (1993) Marie Christine (1999) Henry IV (2004) 110 in the Shade (2007) Twelfth Night (2009) that marked Twelfth Night (2009), which was her Public Theater Shakespeare in the Park debut, the show Shuffle Along or The Making of the Musical Sensation in 1921 as well as All That Followed (2016) Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune (2019) and Ohio State Murders (2023). McDonald was first seen on TV as a dramatic actor on The Peabody Award winner CBS series Having Our Say - The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years. Following her appearance with Kathy Bates, Victor Garber as well as others in the critically famous Disney/ABC version of Annie in 1999, McDonald was a recurring character in NBC's Law & Order Special Victims Unit. McDonald received the first Emmy for her part in the HBO adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize winning play Wit directed by Mike Nichols, starring Emma Thompson. In 2003 she was back on the screen, this time with Mister Sterling produced by Emmy Award-winner Lawrence O'Donnell Jr., which starred Josh Brolin. McDonald became a character on The Bedford Diaries on the WB show The Bedford Diaries in early 2006. In the following season, she played an recurring role on the NBC Television show Kidnapped. McDonald's performance in the HBO film Lady Day At Emerson Bar Restaurant earned her four times an Emmy nomination in the year 2016. The Bite was a six episodes pandemic-themed drama created by Spectrum Originals in collaboration with CBS Studios. She starred in 2009 as she played U.S. Attorney Liz Lawrence on CBS's drama about lawyers The Good Wife. In the year 2018, McDonald returned to her role as Liz Reddick as a regular on Paramount+'s The Good Fight. She got three Critics Choice Award nods for this performance. The actress is a featured character for the HBO series The Gilded Age by Julian Fellowes.