Audra Mc Donald

Audra is an artist who stands out in terms of the range and variety of her talent as a performer and song writer. She was the recipient of an incredible seven Tony Awards (two Grammy Awards) and one Emmy Award, McDonald was listed in the Time Magazine's list of 100 people who are influential in the year 2015. She also received President Barack Obama's National Medal of Arts for her accomplishments. With a stunning soprano, and an unrivalled talent for dramatic truth-telling, she is as much comfortable in Broadway and the opera scene as she is in her TV and film roles. She has a successful career as a recording artist and concert performer performing regularly in several of the most famous performances around the world. McDonald was raised in a musically inclined family in Fresno, CA. She received classical vocal instruction from the Juilliard School of New York. The year 1994 was the year after her Juilliard School, she won the Tony Award for "Best Performance of a Leading Actress musical" for her performance in Carousel. Over the next four years, she received two more 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 three prior to the age of thirty. In 2004, she won her 4th Tony for her role as a lead in A Raisin in the Sun along with Sean Diddy Combs. Then in 2013, she brought her fifth Tony as well as her first award in the Leading actress category. The year 2014 saw her make Broadway history, becoming one of the Tony Awards most decorated performer when she won the sixth Tony Award for her performance as Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill the role which also served as a basis for her Olivier Award nominated performance in the 2017 season of London's West End. Along with setting records for the highest number of wins in an award-giving area by an actor she also became the first actor to be awarded in the four acting categories. McDonald's theater credits also includes The Secret Garden (1993) Marie Christine (99) Henry IV (2007) 110 in the Shade (2008) Twelfth (2009), which was her Public Theater Shakespeare in the Park debut, Shuffle Along or The Making of the Musical sensation of 1921 & All That Followed (2017) Frankie & Johnny in the Clair de Lune (2018) and Ohio State Murders 2023. McDonald was first introduced to the television audience for her dramatic performance in Peabody Award winning CBS's Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters first 100 years. She went on to co-star alongside Kathy Bates and Victor Garber in the highly acclaimed 1999 remake by ABC and Disney of Annie and in 2000 she played a regular role on NBC's hit series Law & Order Special Victims Unit. McDonald won her first Emmy for her performance on her role in the HBO remake of the Pulitzer Prize winning play Wit written by Mike Nichols, starring Emma Thompson. In 2003, she was back on television but this time on Mister Sterling produced by Emmy Award-winning Lawrence O'Donnell Jr., which starred Josh Brolin. The Bedford Diaries on the WB at the beginning of 2006, and Kidnapped, NBC. In 2016, McDonald was nominated for an additional Emmy Award for her appearance on HBO's Lady Day at Emerson's Bar Restaurant & Grill, a movie-special. The actress starred with Taylor Schilling and Steven Pasquale in The Bite a six-episode pandemic-themed drama co-produced through Spectrum Originals and CBS Studios in 2021. She starred in 2009 as she played U.S. Attorney Liz Lawrence in CBS's legal drama The Good Wife. In the year 2018, McDonald reprised her role as Liz Reddick as a regular on Paramount+'s The Good Fight. She received three Critics Choice Award nods for the role. She is currently appearing as a guest on Julian Fellowes' historical drama The Gilded Age, which premieres on HBO.