Audra Mc Donald

Audra McDonald is unmatched in the range and variety of her talent as an actress and a performer. In 2015, she was awarded a record breaking Six Tony Awards as well as two Grammy Awards and the Emmy Award. Her work was acknowledged in Time magazine among the 100 most influential individuals and awarded with the National Medal of Arts - the highest award that is given in America to recognize artistic accomplishment and achievement - by President Barack Obama. Blessed with a luminous soprano and an incomparable gift of telling the truth in a dramatic manner She is equally at home on Broadway and the opera stage as she is in films and television characters. Alongside her stage performances, she also has been a busy recording and concert artist. She is regularly performing at the most prestigious venues in the world. McDonald is from Fresno California, where she was raised by an extended family with musicians. While at the Juilliard School in New York City, McDonald received training as an classical vocalist. The year 1994 was the year after her Juilliard School, McDonald was awarded the Tony Award for "Best Performance by a Lead Actress in musical" for Carousel. In the next four-year period, she was awarded two more Tony Awards as a featured actress in Terrence Mcnally's Broadway debuts Master Class (1996) and Ragtime (1998) and Ragtime (1998), resulting in the total 3 Tony Awards at the age of just 30. The actress won her fourth Tony in 2004, starring alongside Sean Diddy Combs in A Raisin in the Sun and in 2012. In 2012, she received five Tonys and her first time in the category of lead actress for her performance of The Gershwins Porgy and Bess in the title role. As the Tony Awards' most decorated actor, she managed to create Broadway record-breaking history when she took home her sixth Tony Award playing Billie Holiday as Lady Day in Emerson's Bar & Grill. This role also provided the platform to make Her Olivier Award nominee 2017 London West End debut. In addition, she set the record for the most awards won by an actor. Her theater credits include The Secret Garden (1993) Marie Christine (99) Henry IV (2005) 110 in the Shade (2006) Twelfth Nacht (2009) the latter of which was the Public Theater Shakespeare in the Park premiere, which was her first show Shuffle Along or The Making of the Musical sensation in 1921 and All That Followed (2017) Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune (2018) as well as Ohio State Murders 2023. It was the Peabody Award-winning CBS show Having Our Say The Delany Sisters The First 100 Years that first introduced McDonald viewers to her talents as a dramatic actor. Following her appearance with Kathy Bates, Victor Garber along with other stars in the well-received Disney/ABC remake Annie In 1999 McDonald had the role of a regular on the NBC show Law & Order Special Victims Unit. McDonald won her first Emmy for her performance of"The Wit," the HBO versions of the Pulitzer Prize winning play Wit written by Mike Nichols, starring Emma Thompson. In 2003 she was back on television, this time in Mister Sterling produced by Emmy Award-winning Lawrence O'Donnell Jr., featuring Josh Brolin. Early in 2006, she joined WB's The Bedford Diaries. The next year she was an occasional actor on NBC's Kidnapped. In the year 2016 McDonald received a nomination for a fourth Emmy Award due to her performance on HBO's Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill, which was a film special. In 2021, she was a co-star alongside Taylor Schilling and Steven Pasquale in the film The Bite, a pandemic drama produced in collaboration with Spectrum Originals and CBS Studios. Having first appeared as U.S. attorney Liz Lawrence in 2009 on CBS's legal television drama The Good Wife in 2018 McDonald was back in the character (now known as Liz Reddick) as a Season regular on The Good Fight on Paramount+ with 3 Critics Choice Award nominations for her role. In the present, she's appearing as a guest on Julian Fellowes' historical drama The Gilded Age, which can be seen on HBO.