Audra Mc Donald

Audra is a singular artist in terms of the range and variety of her talent as a performer and song writer. The winner of a record-breaking six Tony Awards two Grammy Awards and the Emmy Award in 2015 she was ranked among Time magazine's top 100 influential people and received the National Medal of Arts--America's most prestigious award for excellence in the arts--from the president Barack Obama. She has a voice of unparalleled beauty and a gift of dramatizing the truth the roles she plays in Broadway or the opera have the same aplomb like those on film or on television. In addition to her theatre performances, she also has been a busy recording and concert artist. She regularly performs in some of the top venues around the world. A musically inclined family, McDonald was raised in Fresno California and received her classical vocal training at the New York's Juilliard School. She won her debut Tony Award in 1994 for the best performance of an Actress in a musical, Carousel in the Lincoln Center Theater. The following four years, she won two additional Tony Awards as a featured actress for her roles on Terrence Mcnally's Broadway debuts Master Class (1996) and Ragtime (1998). Her total number of Tony Awards is unprecedented at 3 before the age of thirty. In 2004 she was nominated for her fourth Tony Award. She was in the role of A Raisin in the Sun with Sean Diddy Combs. And in 2012, her fifth Tony and first in the Leading Actress category were won by her role as the main character of The Gershwins Porgy and Bess. She created Broadway historical records in 2014 as she became the highest popular Tony Award nominee. Her portrayal as Billie Holiday at Emerson's Bar & Grill in the show, which was also the catalyst for the career of her Olivier Award nominated debut on London's West End in 2017, earned her six Tony Awards. She also set the record for most awards won by an actor. McDonald was also seen in The Secret Garden (1993), Marie Christine (1999), Henry IV (2004) as well as 110 in the Shade (2007 Twelfth night (2009) and Shuffle Along Shuffle Along: the Making of the Musical Shock of 1921 and Everything That Followed (2016). She made her Public Theater Shakespeare in the Park debut with Twelfth Night (2009). McDonald was introduced to the public via television as a dramatic actor in Peabody Award winning CBS's Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters first 100 years. After starring with Kathy Bates, Victor Garber and other actors in the highly popular Disney/ABC remake of Annie in 1999, McDonald was a recurring character on the NBC show Law & Order Special Victims Unit. McDonald's first Emmy came for the HBO film version of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Wit. The film was directed by Mike Nichols with Emma Thompson as the lead and McDonald returned to television networks in 2003. The show she starred in was Mister Sterling and produced by Emmy Award winner Lawrence O'Donnell Jr. The Bedford Diaries on the WB in early 2006 and Kidnapped, NBC. In 2016, McDonald was nominated for a fourth Emmy Awards for her appearance in HBO's Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill, a film-special. The Bite is a drama with six episodes based on a pandemic, coproduced through Spectrum Originals & CBS Studios. She appeared in the show with Taylor Schilling & Steven Pasquale. Having first appeared as U.S. attorney Liz Lawrence in 2009 on CBS's medical comedy The Good Wife in 2018 McDonald reprised her character (now called Liz Reddick) as a season-long regular on The Good Fight on Paramount+ with 3 Critics Choice Award nominations for her role. She's currently appearing as guest on Julian Fellowes' period comedy The Gilded Age.