Audra Mc Donald

Audra Mcdonald is a standout in the range of her talents and versatility as a singer and actor. Audra McDonald, winner of the prestigious six Tony Awards in a row and two Grammy Awards in 2015 was named as one of Times magazine's 100 Most Influential People. President Barack Obama also awarded her the National Medal of Arts -the nation's most prestigious award for achievements in this field. She is equally at home on television, film as well as Broadway. Her stunning soprano is a perfect fit for the stage. As well as her stage work, she is also a prominent performer as a concert and recording artist regularly appearing at the most prestigious venues in the world. McDonald is a member of a musically inclined family in Fresno, California. She received classical vocal training at The Juilliard School of New York. When she graduated, she won her first Tony Award as Best Performance by a Featured Actor in an Musical in the Lincoln Center Theater for Carousel (1994). The following four years she was awarded two additional Tony Awards for the category of a featured actress. She performed in the Broadway premier productions of Terrence McNally's musical Ragtime as well as Terrence McNally's production of Master Class in 1996. This was an incredible total of three Tony Awards by the time she reached the age of 30. She took home her 4th Tony by starring as a lead in A Raisin in the Sun alongside Sean Diddy Combs. Then in 2013, she brought home her 5th Tony as well as her first in the leading actress category. In 2014, she created Broadway history and became the Tony Awards most decorated performer after she received the sixth Tony Award for her portrayal of Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill the role that also served as the basis for her Olivier Award-nominated performance in the 2017 season of London's West End. Along with recording the record for the highest number of awards won by actors in competition, she also became the first person to receive honors across all four categories. Her other credits for theater are The Secret Garden (1993) Marie Christine (1999) Henry IV (2004) 110 in the Shade (2007) Twelfth Night (2009) which marked the release of her Public Theater Shakespeare in the Park debut Shuffle Along or the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921, and all That Followed (2016) Frankie and Johnny in Clair de Lune (2019) and Ohio State Murders (2023). McDonald made her television debut with the award-winning Peabody Award-winning CBS drama Having Our Say - The Delany Sisters' First Hundred years. She went on to co-star with Kathy Bates and Victor Garber in the lauded 1999 remake by ABC and Disney of Annie and in 2000 she was a frequent guest on NBC's hit series Law & Order Special Victims Unit. After receiving her debut Emmy nomination for her performance in the HBO film adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Wit, written by Mike Nichols and starring Emma Thompson McDonald returned to network television in 2003 with the drama about politics Mister Sterling, produced by Emmy Award winner Lawrence O'Donnell Jr. and featuring Josh Brolin. Early in 2006, McDonald appeared on WB's The Bedford Diaries. The following year, she became an actor who appeared on NBC's Kidnapped. McDonald earned a nomination for a Fourth Emmy in the year 2016 for her performance in HBO's film called Lady Day, at Emerson's Bar & Grill. The Bite will be a six-episode drama about a pandemic coproduced with Spectrum Originals, CBS Studios and Taylor Schilling in 2021. McDonald, who first appeared in the CBS legal drama The Good Wife as U.S. attorneys Liz Lawrence and Liz Reddick from 2009 until 2018, reprised these characters (now called Liz Reddick) in The Good Fight as the Paramount+ season regular. McDonald was nominated to win three Critics Choice Award awards. She appears as a special guest for the HBO series The Gilded Age by Julian Fellowes.