Audra Mc Donald

Audra McDonald's talents are unmatched in her range of talents and variety in her roles as a performer, singer as well as an actor. In 2015, she won record-breaking seven Tony Awards as well as two Grammy Awards and Emmy Awards. Her name was also cited by Time magazine among the 100 most influential individuals and given an award called the National Medal of Arts - the top honor given in America for excellence in art - from the president Barack Obama. A luminous singer with an extraordinary gift for dramatic truth telling Ms. O'Connor is at ease in Broadway and on the stage of opera and on TV. As well as the stage roles, McDonald has established a successful career which is a major recording and concert career. She performs regularly at the most prestigious performances. McDonald was brought up at Fresno California by her musical parents and studied classical singing at Juilliard School, New York. Her first Tony Award in 1994 for the best performance of a Featured actress in a musical for Carousel in the Lincoln Center Theater. In the following four years, she received two additional Tony Awards in the featured actress category, for her roles on performances in the Broadway premieres of Terrence McNally's production Master Class (1996) and the Musical Ragtime (1998) making the record-breaking total of three Tony Awards before the age of 30. In 2004 she was nominated for her fourth Tony Award for her performance in A Raisin in the Sun together with Sean Diddy Combs. And in 2012, her fifth Tony as well as her first win award in the category Leading Actress was awarded to her for her portrayal as the title character in The Gershwins Porgy and Bess. One of the Tony Awards most-decorated performer in 2014 was Billie Holiday, who she played as the title character in Lady Day At Emerson's Bar & Grill. This is the same role she played for her 2017 West End London debut for in which she's been considered for nomination to an Olivier Award. Also, she set the record for the most awards won by an actor. McDonald is also featured on The Secret Garden (1993), Marie Christine (1999), Henry IV (2004) as well as 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 made her Public Theater Shakespeare in the Park debut on Twelfth Night (2009). McDonald was first seen on television with the award-winning Peabody Award-winning CBS show Having Our Say - The Delany Sisters's First 100 Years. She went on to co-star alongside Kathy Bates and Victor Garber in the lauded 1999 television adaptation of Annie and, in 2000, had a recurring role in NBC's smash series Law & Order Special Victims Unit. McDonald received her first Emmy for her performance on The HBO remake of the Pulitzer Prize winning play Wit written by Mike Nichols, starring Emma Thompson. In 2003, she was back on television, this time in Mister Sterling produced by Emmy Award-winner Lawrence O'Donnell Jr., starring Josh Brolin. In 2006, McDonald appeared on WB's The Bedford Diaries. The next year she was an actor who appeared on NBC's Kidnapped. McDonald won a 4th Emmy for her portrayal of Lady Day in Emerson's Bar and Grill on HBO in the year 2016. The Bite is a drama with six seasons based around the pandemic that was co-produced with Spectrum Originals & CBS Studios. McDonald starred in the show with Taylor Schilling & Steven Pasquale. McDonald first played U.S. lawyer Liz Lawrence (now Liz Reddick), in the CBS law-and-order drama The Good Wife, in 2009. In 2018, she recast her role on The Good Fight for Paramount+ as a regular in the series. She received three Critics Choice Award Nominations. Presently, she is a guest star in Julian Fellowes' historical drama The Gilded Age, which is telecast on HBO.