Audra Mc Donald

Audra McDonald's talent is unparalleled in its breadth and diversity in her roles as a performer, singer as well as an actor. In 2015, she was awarded an all-time record of Six Tony Awards as well as two Grammy Awards and the Emmy Award. In addition, she was selected in Time magazine among the 100 most influential people, and she was also awarded with the National Medal of Arts - the top award that is given in America for artistic achievement - from the president Barack Obama. Blessed with a luminous soprano with an extraordinary talent for dramatic truth-telling She is equally at home in Broadway and on the opera on stage as she is in film and TV role. As well as her stage work, she is also a prominent performer as a recording and concert artist who performs regularly at most prestigious venues in the world. McDonald was born into a musically inclined household in Fresno, California. She underwent classical vocal training at the Juilliard School of New York. She won her first Tony Award in 1994 for the best performance of an actress who was featured in a musical called Carousel, at Lincoln Center Theater. In the following four years she received two additional Tony Awards for the category of the featured actress. She performed in Broadway premier productions of Terrence McNally's musical Ragtime and Terrence McNally's performance Master Class in 1996. This was an incredible total of three Tony Awards by the time she turned thirty. In 2004 she was in the running for a fourth Tony Award. Her role was that of A Raisin in the Sun with Sean Diddy Combs. And in 2012, her five-year-old daughter took home her first Tony award in the category of Leading Actress. In that performance, she was the main character of The Gershwins Porgy and Bess. In 2014, she created Broadway history by becoming one of the Tony Awards most decorated performer with the sixth Tony Award for her performance in Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill the role that also served as the stage for her Olivier Award-nominated 2017 premiere in the London's West End. Along with setting records for the highest number of successful wins for an actor, she became the first to win distinctions across the four categories of acting. McDonald has also appeared in The Secret Garden (1993), Marie Christine (1999), Henry IV (2004) and 110 in the Shade (2007 Twelfth night (2009) and Shuffle Along A Musical Shock Story: Making of the Musical Shock of 1921 and Everything That Followed (2016). McDonald was the first actress to be awarded in every one of the acting categories. McDonald was introduced to television viewers as a dramatic actor in Peabody Award winning CBS's Having Our Say A look at the Delany Sisters first 100 years. Following her appearance with Kathy Bates, Victor Garber along with other stars in the well-received ABC/Disney remake of Annie at the end of 1999 McDonald appeared as a recurring character on the NBC show Law & Order Special Victims Unit. McDonald was awarded her first Emmy for her part as a character in the HBO remake of the Pulitzer Prize winning play Wit directed by Mike Nichols, starring Emma Thompson. In 2003, she made her return to television but this time on Mister Sterling produced by Emmy Award-winning Lawrence O'Donnell Jr., featuring Josh Brolin. In 2006, she joined WB's The Bedford Diaries. The following year, she appeared as an occasional actor on NBC's Kidnapped. McDonald received a 4th Emmy award in recognition of her role in HBO's film-special of Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill in the year 2016. In 2021, she was a co-star in a telecast with Taylor Schilling and Steven Pasquale in the film The Bite, a pandemic drama that was co-produced between Spectrum Originals and CBS Studios. McDonald was first seen as U.S. lawyer Liz Lawrence (now Liz Reddick), in the CBS drama, a legal-themed action thriller The Good Wife, in 2009. In the year 2018, she reprised that role in The Good Fight for Paramount+ as a regular on the series. Her performance was recognized with three Critics Choice Award Nominations. She guest stars in Julian Fellowes's historical drama The Gilded Age.