Audra Mc Donald

Audra Mcdonald is a standout in her breadth of talent and versatility in her roles as a performer and singer. Audra McDonald, who won six Tony Awards in a row and two Grammy Awards in 2015 was listed as one of the Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People. The president Barack Obama also awarded her the National Medal of Arts -the nation's most prestigious award for excellence in this area. Blessed with a luminous soprano with an extraordinary talent to tell the truth, she is as much as at ease on Broadway and on the opera stage as in her film and television roles. In addition to her work in the theatre, she is also a prominent performer as a concert and recording performer who regularly appears at world's foremost venues. McDonald was raised at Fresno California by her musical parents. She studied classical music at the Juilliard School, New York. In 1994, a year after she graduated from Juilliard School, McDonald was awarded the Tony Award for "Best Performance of a Leading Actress the Musical" for her performance in Carousel. In the four following years, she received two more Tony Awards as a featured actor for her performances as a featured actress in Terrence Mcnally's Broadway debuts Master Class (1996) and Ragtime (1998). The total number of Tony Awards is unprecedented at three prior to the age of thirty. She was awarded her 4th Tony for the role in which she was a co-star with Sean Diddy Combs in A Raisin in the Sun. Then in 2012, when she was a leading actor on stage in The Gershwins Porgy and Bess she won the fifth Tony and won the first award in the leading actor category. The year 2014 saw her make 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. Not only did she set the record as the most wins in an award-giving category for an actor, she was also the first actor to win awards for the four acting categories. McDonald is also featured for other productions in the theatre which include The Secret Garden (1993) Marie Christine (1999), Henry IV 2004 110 in the Shade (2006) Twelfth Nigh (2009) Twelfth Nigh (2009); it was her Public Theater Shakespeare in the Park debut show, Shuffle Along Or the Making of the Musical Sense of 1921, and all That Followed (16) Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune (192019) as well as Ohio State Murders (2023) McDonald was first seen on TV as a character 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. She also had regularly recurring roles on NBC's Law & Order Special Victims Unit in the year 2000. The following year, she received her debut Emmy nomination in recognition of her role in the HBO film adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning show Wit, directed by Mike Nichols and starring Emma Thompson McDonald returned to television networks in 2003 in the political drama Mister Sterling, produced by Emmy Award winner Lawrence O'Donnell Jr. and featuring Josh Brolin. Early in 2006, she joined WB's The Bedford Diaries. The following year, she became an actor in NBC's Kidnapped. McDonald earned a nomination for a fourth Emmy in 2016 for her part in HBO's movie called Lady Day, at Emerson's Bar & Grill. The actress starred with Taylor Schilling and Steven Pasquale in The Bite a six-episode pandemic-themed drama co-produced through Spectrum Originals and CBS Studios in 2021. McDonald first played U.S. lawyer Liz Lawrence (now Liz Reddick), in the CBS legal drama 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. The actress is currently a guest on Julian Fellowes' historical thriller The Gilded Age on HBO.