Audra Mc Donald

Audra Mcdonald is a unique artist in terms of the diversity and scope of her abilities as an actress and a vocalist. Audra McDonald who has won seven Tony Awards in a row and two Grammy Awards in 2015 was listed as one of the Time magazine's 100 Most Influential people. President Barack Obama also awarded her the National Medal of Arts -the highest honor in America for achievements in this field. She is equally at home with television, film and Broadway. Her luminous soprano makes her a natural on the stage. Her professional career is a success in concert and recording and regularly performs at some of the top performances around the globe. The daughter of a musician family McDonald grew up at Fresno California and received her traditional vocal education in New York's Juilliard School. She won her first Tony Award in 1994 for the top performance of a Featured actress in a show for Carousel which was staged at Lincoln Center Theater. Over the next four years she received two more Tony Awards for the category of principal actress. She performed in Broadway premier productions of Terrence McNally's musical Ragtime as well as Terrence McNally's performance Master Class in 1996. That was a staggering amount of three Tony Awards by the time she turned 30. She won her fourth Tony in the role of Sean Diddy Combs in A Raisin in the Sun and in 2012, she took home her fifth Tony Award, and her first win in the leading actress category for her role as the title as the title character in The Gershwins Porgy and Bess. She is the Tony Awards' most decorated actor, she managed to create Broadway record-breaking history when she took home her sixth Tony Award playing Billie Holiday as Lady Day in Emerson's Bar & Grill. This part also gave her the opportunity to perform to make the Olivier Award nominee 2017 London West End debut. She also set records for the highest number of award wins by an actor. Other credits in the theater include The Secret Garden (1993) Marie Christine (1999) Henry IV (2004) 110 in the Shade (2007) Twelfth Night (2009) which marked the release of her Public Theater Shakespeare in the Park debut 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) as well as Ohio State Murders (2023). McDonald was introduced to the public via television as a dramatic actress by Peabody Award winning CBS's Having Our Say: A look at the Delany Sisters first 100 years. The year 1999 saw her appeared 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 on The HBO version of the Pulitzer Prize winning play Wit directed by Mike Nichols, starring Emma Thompson. In 2003, she re-appeared on television, but this time she was in Mister Sterling produced by Emmy Award winner Lawrence O'Donnell Jr., featuring Josh Brolin. Then, in the beginning of 2006, she joined The Bedford Diaries' cast on WB's The Bedford Diaries and over the course of the season, she was the role of a regular on NBC's popular television show Kidnapped. McDonald was awarded a 4th Emmy for her role as Lady Day in Emerson's Bar and Grill, which aired on HBO in the year 2016. The Bite is a drama with six episodes based on an epidemic, produced by Spectrum Originals & CBS Studios. She appeared alongside Taylor Schilling & Steven Pasquale. The actress first appeared in the role of U.S. attorney Liz Lawrence in 2009 on CBS's legal television drama The Good Wife in 2018 McDonald reprised her role (now being dubbed Liz Reddick) as a regular on the season of The Good Fight on Paramount+ receiving 3 Critics Choice Award nominations for her role. She is currently in the role of a guest star on Julian Fellowes' historical drama The Gilded Age on HBO.