Audra Mc Donald

Audra Mcdonald stands out in the range of her talents and versatility as an actor and singer. In 2015, she won an unprecedented six Tony Awards as well as two Grammy Awards and Emmy Awards. The actress was also identified in Time magazine among the 100 most influential people and was received with the National Medal of Arts - the top award given in America in recognition of artistic excellence by the president Barack Obama. With a soprano of unmatched elegance and an aptitude to tell the truth in a dramatic way, her roles on Broadway or the opera have the same aplomb as the roles in movies or on television. Apart from her theater work, she has an active career as a singer and a concert artist. She performs regularly in some of the top venues around the world. McDonald was brought up in Fresno California by her musical parents. She studied classical music at the Juilliard School, New York. After graduating, she received the first Tony Award as Best Performance by an Featured Artist in an Musical in the Lincoln Center Theater for Carousel (1994). In the following four years, she won two more Tony Awards for the category of featured actress. She performed in Broadway premier productions of Terrence McNally's musical Ragtime and Terrence McNally's play Master Class in 1996. It was an amazing total of three Tony Awards by the time she was thirty. In 2004, she was nominated for her fourth Tony Award for her performance in A Raisin in the Sun together with Sean Diddy Combs. And in 2012, her fifth Tony and her first nomination in the Leading Actress category was awarded to her for her portrayal as the main character of The Gershwins Porgy and Bess. She made Broadway history in 2014 when she became the world's most popular Tony Award nominee. The role she played as Billie Holiday at Emerson's Bar & Grill in the show, which was also the catalyst for her Olivier Award nominated debut on London's West End in 2017, earned her six Tony Awards. In addition to setting a record to win the most awards for acting performance, she also became the first woman to be awarded the four categories of acting. Her other credits for theater are The Secret Garden (1993) Marie Christine (1999) Henry IV (2004) 110 in the Shade (2007) Twelfth Night (2009) which marked her Public Theater Shakespeare in the Park debut show, Shuffle Along or the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed (2016) Frankie and Johnny in Clair de Lune (2019) and Ohio State Murders (2023). McDonald was first seen on television in the Peabody Award-winning CBS series Having Our Say - The Delany Sisters's First Hundred years. The actress then starred with Kathy Bates and Victor Garber in the highly acclaimed 1999 remake by ABC and Disney of Annie and, in 2000, played a regular role on the NBC's hit show Law & Order Special Victims Unit. McDonald's first Emmy came for the HBO movie adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Wit. The film was directed by Mike Nichols with Emma Thompson as the lead the actress returned to network TV in 2003. The show she starred in was Mister Sterling and produced by Emmy Award winner Lawrence O'Donnell Jr. She joined The Bedford Diaries on the WB The Bedford Diaries The Bedford Diaries in early 2006. Following the season, she played in a role that was recurring on NBC's television show Kidnapped. McDonald was nominated for a fourth Emmy in 2016, for her role in HBO's movie called Lady Day, at Emerson's Bar & Grill. The Bite was a six episodes pandemic-themed drama created through Spectrum Originals in collaboration with CBS Studios. McDonald first played U.S. lawyer Liz Lawrence (now Liz Reddick), in the CBS Legal thriller The Good Wife, in 2009. In 2018 she reprised her role on The Good Fight for Paramount+ as a regular on the series. She received three Critics Choice Award Nominations. Presently, she is appearing as a guest on Julian Fellowes' historical drama The Gilded Age, which premieres on HBO.