Audra Mc Donald

Audra is a singular artist because of her range and diversity of her talents as a performer and songwriter. Her record-breaking success includes 6 Tony Awards two Grammy Awards as well as the Emmy Award in 2015 she was ranked among Time magazine's 100 most influential individuals and was awarded the National Medal of Arts--America's highest honor for achievement in the field--from President Barack Obama. A soprano with unmatched beauty, and an ability of dramatizing the truth Her roles in Broadway or in the opera have the same aplomb as the roles in movies as well as on TV. Alongside her stage job, she is also pursuing an active career as a musician and recording artist. She regularly performs in the best venues of the world. McDonald was raised within Fresno California by her musical parents. She studied classical music at Juilliard School, New York. In 1994, just a few years following her graduation from Juilliard School, McDonald was awarded the Tony Award for "Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a musical" for Carousel. After four more years of performing in Broadway's premieres, Master Class by Terrence M. McNally (1996) and Ragtime (1998) in 1998, she won two additional Tony Awards. In 2004, she was nominated to win her 4th Tony Award, starring in A Raisin in the Sun alongside Sean Diddy Combs. And in 2012, her fifth Tony as well as her first win for the category of Leading Actress were won by her role as the titular character in The Gershwins Porgy and Bess. In 2014 she made Broadway history and became one of the Tony Awards most decorated performer when she won her sixth award for her performance as Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill the role which was also the basis for her Olivier Award-nominated performance in the 2017 season of London's West End. As well as recording the record for the highest number of awards won by actors in competition, she also became the first actor to be awarded honors in all four acting categories. Her other credits for theater are The Secret Garden (1993) Marie Christine (1999) Henry IV (2004) 110 in the Shade (2007) Twelfth Night (2009) that marked her Public Theater Shakespeare in the Park debut 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) as well as Ohio State Murders (2023). McDonald's first appearance as a dramatic actor on television was in the Peabody Award-winning CBS series Having Our Say The Delany Sistersthe first 100 years. The next time she appeared on television was that of a regular actor on NBC's Law & Order Special Victims Unit and she was a part of the cast with Kathy Bates and Victor Garber. McDonald was awarded the first Emmy for her performance on the HBO adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize winning play Wit directed by Mike Nichols, starring Emma Thompson. In 2003 she was back on television but this time on Mister Sterling produced by Emmy Award winner Lawrence O'Donnell Jr., starring Josh Brolin. Then, in the beginning of 2006, she joined The Bedford Diaries' cast on show on WB called The Bedford Diaries and over the following season, she played a recurring role on NBC's television series Kidnapped. In the year 2016, McDonald was nominated for a fourth Emmy Award for her performance in HBO's Lady Day at Emerson's Bar Restaurant & Grill, a movie-special. The Bite will be a 6-episode drama focusing on a deadly epidemic co-produced by Spectrum Originals, CBS Studios and Taylor Schilling in 2021. In 2009, she played U.S. Attorney Liz Lawrence in CBS's legal drama The Good Wife. In 2018, McDonald took on the role of Liz Reddick as a regular on Paramount+'s The Good Fight. She received three Critics Choice Award nods for her performance. She is currently a guest star in Julian Fellowes' historical drama The Gilded Age, which airs on HBO.