Audra Mc Donald

Audra Mcdonald is an exceptional artist due to the diversity and scope of her skills as an actor and singer. Her record-breaking success includes 6 Tony Awards two Grammy Awards as well as an Emmy Award in 2015 she was named one of Times magazine's top 100 influential individuals. She was also awarded the National Medal of Arts--America's highest honor for achievement within the field--from the President Barack Obama. A soprano with unmatched elegance and a talent for dramatizing truth the roles she plays on Broadway or at the opera stage are just as comfortable with roles in film as well as on TV. In addition to her theatre work, she has been a busy musician and recording artist. She has a regular performance schedule in the finest venues of the world. The daughter of a musician family McDonald lived living in Fresno California and received her training in classical singing at New York's Juilliard School. The year 1994 was the year following her graduation from the Juilliard School, McDonald was awarded the Tony Award for "Best Performance of a Leading Actress the Musical" for her performance in Carousel. The following four years the actress was awarded two additional Tony Awards as a featured actor on Terrence Mcnally's Broadway debuts Master Class (1996) and Ragtime (1998), making an overall total of three Tony Awards at the age just 30. In 2004, she received her fourth Tony in the role of Sean Diddy Combs in A Raisin in the Sun and in 2012, she took home her fifth--and her first in the lead actress category for her title role performance as the title character in The Gershwins Porgy and Bess. In 2014 she made Broadway history by becoming an official Tony Awards most decorated performer in her sixth nomination for her portrayal of Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill the role that also served as the platform for her Olivier Award-nominated debut in the London's West End. In addition, she set the record for most awards received by actors. The other plays she has appeared in include The Secret Garden (1993) Marie Christine (1999) Henry IV (2004) 110 in the Shade (2007) Twelfth Night (2009) the film that was the release of her Public Theater Shakespeare in the Park debut film, Shuffle Along or The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921, and all That Followed (2016) Frankie and Johnny in Clair de Lune (2019) as well as Ohio State Murders (2023). McDonald was first introduced to a television audience as a dramatic actress in Peabody Award winning CBS's Having Our Say: A look at the Delany Sisters first 100 years. Following her appearance with Kathy Bates, Victor Garber along with other stars in the well-received Disney/ABC remake of Annie at the end of 1999 McDonald had a recurring character on the network's Law & Order Special Victims Unit. McDonald received her first Emmy for her role on"The Wit," the HBO version of the Pulitzer Prize winning play Wit written by Mike Nichols, starring Emma Thompson. In 2003 she was back on the screen, this time with Mister Sterling produced by Emmy Award winner Lawrence O'Donnell Jr., starring Josh Brolin. Beginning in 2006 she was part of in the ensemble of the The Bedford Diaries on the WB. The Bedford Diaries and over the following season, she played the role of a regular on NBC's drama series Kidnapped. In the year 2016 McDonald was nominated to win a fourth Emmy Award for her role in HBO's Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill, a special film. The Bite is a drama with six episodes based on a pandemic, coproduced by Spectrum Originals & CBS Studios. She appeared alongside 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 reprised her role as Liz Reddick as a regular in Paramount+'s The Good Fight. She was awarded three Critics Choice Award nods for the role. In the present, she's appearing as a guest on Julian Fellowes' historical drama The Gilded Age, which premieres on HBO.