Audra Mc Donald

Audra McDonald is unmatched with the variety and breadth of her artistry as both acting and singing. A record-breaking winner of seven Tony Awards two Grammy Awards and an Emmy Award in 2015 she was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential individuals. She was also awarded the National Medal of Arts--America's most prestigious honor for achievements within the field--from President Barack Obama. With an unbeatable soprano beauty and a knack for dramatizing truth the roles she plays on Broadway or at the opera can be as welcoming as the roles in movies and TV. Alongside her theatrical work she is also a prominent performer as a recording artist who performs regularly at world's foremost venues. McDonald grew in Fresno California, where she was raised by an extended family with musicians. At the Juilliard School in New York City, McDonald received training as the classical singer. The following year, after graduation, she was awarded her first Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured actress in musical for Carousel at the Lincoln Center Theater (1994). After four years, she took home two additional Tony Awards for the category of principal actress. She performed in Broadway premier productions of Terrence McNally's musical Ragtime as well as Terrence McNally's performance Master Class in 1996. The result was an astonishing total of three Tony Awards by the time she was 30. In 2004, she received her fourth Tony for her role as Sean Diddy Combs in A Raisin in the Sun and In 2012, she was awarded her fifth--and her first in the leading actress category for her role as the title for her role in The Gershwins Porgy and Bess. She made Broadway history and became an official Tony Awards most decorated performer when she won her sixth nomination for her performance in Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill the role that also served as the vehicle for her Olivier Award-nominated 2017 debut performance in London's West End. In addition to setting records for the amount of awards an actor earned, she was the first actor to take home every category. McDonald has also appeared on The Secret Garden (1993), Marie Christine (1999), Henry IV (2004) as well as 110 in the Shade (2007 Twelfth night (2009) and the film Shuffle Along A Musical Shock: Shuffle Along: Making of the Musical Shock of 1921 and Everything That Followed (2016). She was the first actress to be awarded in the four categories of acting. The Peabody Award-winning CBS show Having Our Say The Delany Sisters The First 100 Years that first introduced McDonald to the television audience as a dramatic actress. She went on to co-star alongside Kathy Bates and Victor Garber in the lauded 1999 Disney/ABC television remake of Annie and then in 2000 she played a regular role on NBC's hit series Law & Order Special Victims Unit. In the wake of receiving the first Emmy nomination for her performance in the HBO film version of the Pulitzer Prize winning play Wit which was directed by Mike Nichols and starring Emma Thompson McDonald returned on television network in 2003 on the political drama Mister Sterling, produced by Emmy Award winner Lawrence O'Donnell Jr. and starring Josh Brolin. In early 2006 she joined in the ensemble of the show on WB called The Bedford Diaries and over the following season, she played an recurring role in NBC's drama series Kidnapped. McDonald earned a fourth Emmy for her role as Lady Day in Emerson's Bar & Grill on HBO in 2016. In 2021 she co-starred with Taylor Schilling and Steven Pasquale in the film The Bite, a pandemic film produced by Spectrum Originals and CBS Studios. First appearing in the role of U.S. attorney Liz Lawrence in the year 2009 on CBS's legal show The Good Wife in 2018 McDonald was back in her role (now named Liz Reddick) as a Season regular on The Good Fight on Paramount+ and received 3 Critics Choice Award nominations for her role. The actor is currently appearing as a guest in Julian Fellowes's historical thriller The Gilded Age on HBO.