Audra Mc Donald

Audra McDonald is unrivaled in the range and variety of her talent as actor and singer. As the winner of an incredible six Tony Awards (two Grammy Awards) and an Emmy Award, McDonald was included in Time magazine's list of 100 people who are influential in 2015. The president also awarded her Obama's National Medal of Arts for her accomplishments. She has a home in film, television as well as Broadway. Her stunning soprano is a perfect fit for the stage. Apart from her theater job, she is also pursuing an active career as a singer and a concert artist. She regularly performs in some of the top venues around the world. McDonald was brought up within Fresno California by her musical parents. They also studied classical singing in the Juilliard School, New York. After graduating, she won the very first Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured actress in a Musical for Carousel at Lincoln Center Theater (1994). Over the next four years, she also received two more Tony Awards under the featured actress category. They were awarded in recognition of her Broadway performances of Terrence McGally's productions Master Class and Ragtime. In 2004 she won her fourth Tony for her role as Sean Diddy Combs in A Raisin in the Sun and in 2012 she won her fifth--and her first for the category of leading actress for her performance as the title character as the title character in The Gershwins Porgy and Bess. The year 2014 saw her make Broadway history, becoming one of the Tony Awards most decorated performer in her sixth award for her portrayal of Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill the role which was also the basis for her Olivier Award nominated 2017 debut in London's West End. Along with recording the record for the highest number of performances that an actor has won in a competition she also became the first person to receive awards across all four categories. McDonald was also seen 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: A Story of the Making of the Musical Shock of 1921 and All That Followed (2016). She was the first to make her Public Theater Shakespeare in the Park debut in Twelfth Nacht (2009). McDonald was first seen on TV as a drama actor in The Peabody Award winner CBS series Having Our Say - The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years. She went on to co-star with Kathy Bates and Victor Garber in the lauded 1999 television adaptation of Annie and in 2000 she had a recurring role on the NBC's hit show Law & Order Special Victims Unit. McDonald, who received an Emmy Award nomination for 1999 for her performance as a character in an HBO version of Pulitzer Prize-winning play Wit directed and starring Emma Thompson, made her return to the network in 2003 for the drama about politics Mister Sterling. The film was written and produced by Emmy Award-winning Lawrence O'Donnell Jr. The Bedford Diaries on the WB in the early part of 2006 as well as Kidnapped, NBC. In 2016, McDonald was nominated for the fourth Emmy award for her appearance as a character in HBO's Lady Day at Emerson's Bar Restaurant & Grill, a movie-special. She also appeared in 2021 when she was a co-star in a telecast with Taylor Schilling and Steven Pasquale in the film The Bite, a pandemic film produced by Spectrum Originals and CBS Studios. McDonald first played U.S. lawyer Liz Lawrence (now Liz Reddick), in CBS's Legal action thriller The Good Wife, in 2009. In 2018, she recast that role in The Good Fight for Paramount+ as a regular in the series. Her performance received three Critics Choice Award Nominations. The actress also appeared in Julian Fellowes historical drama The Gilded Age.