Audra Mc Donald

Audra McDonald is unparalleled with the variety and breadth of her talent as an actress and a performer. Her 2015 season saw her win an all-time record of 6 Tony Awards as well as two Grammy Awards and the Emmy Award. She was also selected in Time magazine among the 100 most influential people, and she was also awarded the National Medal of Arts - the most prestigious award that is given in America for excellence in art - from the president Barack Obama. A soprano with unmatched beauty, and an ability for making truth come alive, her roles on Broadway or in the opera stage are just as comfortable as those in films and television. She has a successful career performing and recording, appearing regularly at some of the most famous places around the world. The daughter of a musician family McDonald spent her childhood 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, McDonald took home the Tony Award for "Best Performance of a Leading Actress musical" for her performance in Carousel. The next four years she received two additional Tony Awards in the featured actress category for her performances in performances in the Broadway productions Terrence McNally's production Master Class (1996) and his Musical Ragtime (1998) which gave her the record-breaking total of three 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 at the end of 2012. In 2012, she received five Tony Awards and the first in the category of leading actress, for her role on stage in The Gershwins Porgy and Bess as the main character. The actress made Broadway the history books in 2014 as she was named the highest-rated Tony Award performer. She played Billie Holiday at Emerson's Bar & Grill, the role which also served to launch her Olivier Award nominated debut on London's West End in 2017, was the reason she received six awards. Also, she broke the record for most awards received by actors. McDonald was also on The Secret Garden (1993), Marie Christine (1999), Henry IV (2004) and 110 in the Shade (2007 Twelfth night (2009) and the film Shuffle Along: The Making of the Musical Shock of 1921, and All That Followed (2016). She was the very first actress to receive awards in each of the four acting categories. McDonald's first appearance as a dramatic TV actor came with the Peabody Award-winning CBS show Having Our Say, The Delany Sisters' First 100 years. After starring with Kathy Bates, Victor Garber and other actors in the highly acclaimed Disney/ABC version of Annie during 1999 McDonald was an recurring role on NBC's Law & Order Special Victims Unit. McDonald was awarded her first Emmy for her part on The HBO adaptation 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., with Josh Brolin. At the beginning of 2006, McDonald starred on the WB's The Bedford Diaries. The subsequent year, she was an occasional actor on NBC's Kidnapped. In 2016, McDonald was nominated for her fourth Emmy Award for her role in HBO's Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill, which was a film special. She starred alongside Taylor Schilling and Steven Pasquale in The Bite a six-episode pandemic-themed drama produced with Spectrum Originals and CBS Studios in 2021. In 2009, she portrayed U.S. Attorney Liz Lawrence on CBS's legal drama The Good Wife. In 2018, McDonald took on the role of Liz Reddick as a regular in Paramount+'s The Good Fight. She received three Critics Choice Award nods for the role. The actress also appears in Julian Fellowes's historical drama The Gilded Age.