Audra Mc Donald

Audra McDonald is unparalleled in the range and variety of her work as a singer and an actor. A record-breaking winner of Six Tony Awards two Grammy Awards as well as the Emmy Award in 2015 she was named one of Times magazine's top 100 influential individuals and was awarded the National Medal of Arts, America's most prestigious award for excellence in the arts--from President Barack Obama. A dazzling soprano and an incomparable gift for dramatic truth-telling She is equally at home on Broadway and on the opera scene as she is in her film or television characters. In addition to her theatre job, she is also pursuing many facets of her career, including music producer and concert artist. She has a regular performance schedule at the most prestigious venues in the world. McDonald is from Fresno California, where she was raised by a large family with musicians. At the Juilliard School in New York City, McDonald received training as an opera singer. The first time she won a Tony Award in 1994 for the top performance of a Featured actress in a show for Carousel, at Lincoln Center Theater. In the subsequent four years, she was awarded two additional Tony Awards as a featured actor for her performances in Terrence Mcnally's Broadway debuts Master Class (1996) and Ragtime (1998) that gave her a total of 3 Tony Awards at the age of just 30. In 2004, she was nominated for a fourth Tony Award. Her role was that of A Raisin in the Sun along with Sean Diddy Combs. And in 2012, her five year old daughter took home her first Tony award in the Leading Actress category when she was the main character of The Gershwins Porgy and Bess. The year 2014 saw her make Broadway history by becoming the Tony Awards most decorated performer after she received six awards for her performance as Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill the role which was also the stage for her Olivier Award nomination 2017 debut on the London's West End. As well as setting records in terms of the number of Tony Awards an actor has received, she also became the first ever to have won the four categories. Her other credits for theater are The Secret Garden (1993) Marie Christine (1999) Henry IV (2004) 110 in the Shade (2007) Twelfth Night (2009) in which she made Twelfth Night (2009), which was her Public Theater Shakespeare in the Park debut, the show Shuffle Along or The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed (2016) Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune (2019) and Ohio State Murders (2023). McDonald's first appearance as a dramatic TV actor came with the award-winning Peabody Award CBS series Having Our Say, The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years. After her role as a co-star with Kathy Bates, Victor Garber as well as others in the critically acclaimed Disney/ABC remake Annie In 1999 McDonald had a recurring character in NBC's Law & Order Special Victims Unit. McDonald, who was awarded an Emmy Award nomination back in 1999 due to her part as a character in an HBO version of Pulitzer Prize-winning film Wit starring Emma Thompson, returned to network television in 2003 on the political drama Mister Sterling. The film was produced by Emmy Award-winning Lawrence O'Donnell Jr. She joined the WB show The Bedford Diaries in early 2006. The following season, she appeared as one of the characters on NBC's program Kidnapped. In 2016, McDonald was nominated for a fourth Emmy Award due to her performance on HBO's Lady Day at Emerson's Bar Restaurant & Grill, a movie-special. The Bite is a drama which has six episodes, based on the spread of a disease, and produced through Spectrum Originals & CBS Studios. She starred with Taylor Schilling & Steven Pasquale. In 2009, she played U.S. Attorney Liz Lawrence on CBS's drama about lawyers The Good Wife. In 2018, McDonald returned to her role as Liz Reddick as a regular on Paramount's The Good Fight. She got three Critics Choice Award nods for the performance. She is currently in the role of a guest star on Julian Fellowes's historical drama The Gilded Age on HBO.