Audra Mc Donald

Audra is a unique artist because of her range and diversity of her talents as a performer and songwriter. The winner of a record-breaking seven Tony Awards (two Grammy Awards) as well as an Emmy Award, McDonald was named to Time magazine's list for 100 people who are influential in the year 2015. In addition, she was awarded President Obama's National Medal of Arts for her work. A soprano with unmatched beauty and a gift of dramatizing the truth, her roles on Broadway or in the opera are as comfortable as the roles in movies or on television. As well as her stage work, she is also a prominent performer as a recording artist regularly appearing at the top venues around the globe. McDonald was raised in Fresno California by her musical parents. She studied classical music at Juilliard School, New York. In 1994, a year after her Juilliard School, McDonald won the Tony Award for "Best Performance by a Leading Actress in Musical" for Carousel. Over the next four years she received two additional Tony Awards in the featured actress category, for her roles of performances in the Broadway premieres of Terrence McNally's production Master Class (1996) and his show Ragtime (1998) which gave her an unheard of number of Tony Awards before the age of thirty. The actress won her fourth Tony in 2004, starring alongside Sean Diddy Combs in A Raisin in the Sun and in 2012. In 2012, she won five Tonys, and the first time in the category of leading actress for her role on stage in The Gershwins Porgy and Bess as the title role. One of the Tony Awards most-decorated performer in 2014 was Billie Holiday, who she was in Lady Day At Emerson's Bar & Grill. It is identical to the role she performed in her 2017 West End London debut for in which she's been named for the Olivier Award. In addition to setting a record to win the most awards by an acting performance, she also became the first woman to be awarded all four acting categories. McDonald was also seen on The Secret Garden (1993), Marie Christine (1999), Henry IV (2004), 110 In The Shade (2007 Twelfth night (2009) and the musical Shuffle Along Shuffle Along: A Story of the Making of the Musical Shock of 1921 and All That Followed (2016). She was the first to make her Public Theater Shakespeare in the Park debut with Twelfth night (2009). McDonald was first seen on TV as a dramatic actor on her role on the Peabody Award winner CBS series Having Our Say - The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years. In the following years, she starred alongside Kathy Bates, Victor Garber and other actors in the highly famous Disney/ABC version of Annie in 1999, McDonald had a recurring character on the NBC show Law & Order Special Victims Unit. Following her debut Emmy award for her performance on the HBO film version of the Pulitzer Prize-winning show Wit, directed by Mike Nichols and starring Emma Thompson McDonald returned on television network in 2003 on the political drama Mister Sterling, produced by Emmy Award winner Lawrence O'Donnell Jr. and starring Josh Brolin. The actress became a character on the WB The Bedford Diaries The Bedford Diaries in early 2006. In the following season, she played a recurring character on NBC's television show Kidnapped. In the year 2016, McDonald was nominated for an additional Emmy Awards for her performance on HBO's Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill, a film-special. The Bite will be a six-episode series about a pandemic that will be produced by Spectrum Originals, CBS Studios and Taylor Schilling in 2021. McDonald initially played U.S. lawyer Liz Lawrence (now Liz Reddick), in CBS's law-and-order action thriller The Good Wife, in the year 2009. In 2018, she recast that role in The Good Fight for Paramount+ as a regular on the series. Her performance received three Critics Choice Award Nominations. She appears as a special guest on the HBO series The Gilded Age by Julian Fellowes.