Audra Mc Donald

Audra Mcdonald is unique in the breadth of her talent and her versatility as an actor and singer. As the winner of an unprecedented six Tony Awards (two Grammy Awards) and one Emmy Award, McDonald was included in Time magazine's list of 100 influential people in the year 2015. In addition, she was awarded President Barack Obama's National Medal of Arts for her accomplishments. She is equally at home in television, film as well as Broadway. Her stunning soprano will make her an ideal performer on the stage. Alongside her theatrical work she has a thriving career as a recording and concert artist who performs regularly at top venues around the globe. McDonald is a member of a musically inclined family from Fresno in California. She received classical vocal training at the Juilliard School of New York. When she graduated, she won the first Tony Award as Best Performance of a Featured Artist an Musical in the Lincoln Center Theater for Carousel (1994). The following four years she received two more Tony Awards under the featured actress category. These were for her Broadway productions of Terrence McGally's productions Master Class and Ragtime. The year 2004, she was awarded her fourth Tony for the role she played alongside Sean Diddy Combs in A Raisin in the Sun. When she was in 2012, she was the lead actress for the role of Porgy and Bess in The Gershwins Porgy and Bess she won five Tony and won the first prize in the lead actor category. In 2014, the Tony Awards most-decorated performer in 2014 was Billie Holiday, who she was as the title character in Lady Day At Emerson's Bar & Grill. It is exactly the role she portrayed during her performance in 2017's West End London debut for which she has been considered for nomination to an Olivier Award. Along with setting the record in the competition to win the most awards for actor, she was the first to have won each of the four categories for acting. McDonald was also seen on The Secret Garden (1993), Marie Christine (1999), Henry IV (2004) and 110 in The Shade (2007 Twelfth night (2009) and the musical Shuffle Along: the Making of the Musical Shock in 1921 as well as Everything That Followed (2016). McDonald also made her Public Theater Shakespeare in the Park debut on Twelfth night (2009). McDonald first made her television debut as a drama actor in The Peabody Award winner CBS series Having Our Say - The Delany Sisters' First 100 years. The year 1999 saw her co-starred with Kathy Bates in ABC's acclaimed remake of Annie. In addition, she played a recurring part in NBC's Law & Order Special Victims Unit in 2000. McDonald was awarded her first Emmy for her performance in the HBO version of the Pulitzer Prize winning play Wit directed by Mike Nichols, starring Emma Thompson. In 2003 she was back on television, this time in Mister Sterling produced by Emmy Award-winner Lawrence O'Donnell Jr., starring Josh Brolin. The actress joined the WB show The Bedford Diaries in early 2006. Following the season, she starred as in a role that was recurring on NBC's TV show Kidnapped. McDonald received a nomination for a fourth Emmy in 2016, for her role in HBO's production of Lady Day, at Emerson's Bar and Grill. 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 drama co-produced by Spectrum Originals and CBS Studios. She first appeared on the show in the role of U.S. attorney Liz Lawrence in 2009 on CBS's legal comedy The Good Wife in 2018 McDonald took on the character (now named Liz Reddick) as a season regular of The Good Fight on Paramount+ receiving the three Critics Choice Award nominations for her performance. She is currently appearing as a guest in Julian Fellowes's historical drama The Gilded Age on HBO.