Audra Mc Donald

Audra Mcdonald stands out in the breadth of her talent and versatility in her roles as a performer and singer. In 2015, she won a record breaking six Tony Awards as well as two Grammy Awards and Emmy Awards. The actress was also identified by Time magazine among the 100 most influential people, and she was also received with the National Medal of Arts - the highest prize given in America for excellence in art - from the president Barack Obama. Blessed with a luminous soprano, and an unrivalled talent for dramatic truth-telling her voice is comfortable in Broadway and the opera scene as she is in her role in television and film. She has a successful career in concert and recording, appearing regularly at many of the top performances around the world. McDonald was born into a musically inclined family in Fresno, CA. She received classical vocal instruction from her school, the Juilliard School of New York. In 1994, a year following her graduation from Juilliard School, McDonald won the Tony Award for "Best Performance by a Leading Actress in Musical" for Carousel. The next four years she was awarded two more Tony Awards in the featured actress category for her performances in the Broadway premieres of Terrence McNally's play Master Class (1996) and the Musical Ragtime (1998) giving her an unheard of number of Tony Awards before the age of thirty. She won her fourth Tony in 2004 when she starred alongside Sean Diddy Combs in A Raisin in the Sun and at the end of 2012. In 2012, she took home five Tonys, and the first time in the category of lead actress for her performance as Porgy and Bess in The Gershwins Porgy and Bess in the lead role. She created Broadway historical records in 2014 when she became the world's most popular Tony Award nominee. Her portrayal as Billie Holiday at Emerson's Bar & Grill, the role which also served to launch her Olivier Award nominated debut on London's West End in 2017, was her six award. As the first actress to be given awards in four distinct acting categories, McDonald also broke the record for the amount of awards an actor has been awarded. McDonald is also featured in The Secret Garden (1993), Marie Christine (1999), Henry IV (2004) and 110 in The Shade (2007 Twelfth night (2009) and the musical Shuffle Along Shuffle Along: A Story of the Making of the Musical Shock in 1921 as well as Everything That Followed (2016). McDonald made her Public Theater Shakespeare in the Park debut on Twelfth Night (2009). McDonald's first role as a dramatic actor on television was with the Peabody Award-winning CBS series Having Our Say The Delany Sistersthe first 100 years. She went on to co-star with Kathy Bates and Victor Garber in the lauded 1999 remake by ABC and Disney of Annie and in 2000 she had a recurring role on NBC's hit series Law & Order Special Victims Unit. McDonald's first Emmy was awarded for her performance in the HBO film version of the The Pulitzer Prize-winning Wit. Directed by Mike Nichols with Emma Thompson as the main character, McDonald then returned to network TV in 2003. The show she starred in was Mister Sterling and produced by Emmy Award Winner Lawrence O'Donnell Jr. The Bedford Diaries on the WB in the early part of 2006 as well as Kidnapped, NBC. McDonald's performance in the HBO production Lady Day At Emerson Bar and Grill earned her a four-time Emmy nomination in 2016. The Bite will be a six-episode drama about a pandemic coproduced with Spectrum Originals, CBS Studios and Taylor Schilling in 2021. Having first appeared as U.S. attorney Liz Lawrence in the year 2009 on CBS's legal show The Good Wife in 2018 McDonald reprised the character (now known as Liz Reddick) as a season-long regular on The Good Fight on Paramount+ receiving three Critics Choice Award nominations for her performance. The actress also appeared on Julian Fellowes historical drama The Gilded Age.