Audra Mc Donald

Audra Mcdonald stands out as a truly unique artist in terms of the diversity and scope of her skills as an actor and singer. She was the recipient of record-breaking 6 Tony Awards two Grammy Awards as well as an Emmy Award in 2015 she was named one of Times magazine's top 100 influential people and received the National Medal of Arts--America's highest honor for achievement in the arts--from President Barack Obama. With a stunning soprano and an incomparable gift to tell the truth She is equally comfortable on Broadway as well as on the stage as in her film and television role. As well as her theatrical work, she has been a busy singer and concert performer. She is regularly performing in the finest venues of the world. A musically inclined family, McDonald grew up within Fresno California and received her classical vocal training in New York's Juilliard School. A year after graduating she took home her very first Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured actress in musical for Carousel at the Lincoln Center Theater (1994). Through the course of four years she was awarded two more Tony Awards in the featured actress category, for her roles on performances in the Broadway premieres of Terrence McNally's Play Master Class (1996) and his show Ragtime (1998) creating an incredible total of three Tony Awards before the age of thirty. The actress won her fourth Tony in 2004 when she starred alongside Sean Diddy Combs in A Raisin in the Sun as well as at the end of 2012. In 2012 she was awarded five Tonys, her first one in the category leading actress, for her performance on stage in The Gershwins Porgy and Bess as the title role. In 2014, she created Broadway history, becoming the Tony Awards most decorated performer in the sixth Tony Award in the role of Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill the role that was also used as the basis for her Olivier Award nomination 2017 debut on the London's West End. As well as setting the record for the most performances that an actor has won in a competition she also became the first person to receive the award in all four acting categories. McDonald has also appeared in The Secret Garden (1993), Marie Christine (1999), Henry IV (2004) as well as 110 in the Shade (2007 Twelfth night (2009) and the film Shuffle Along A Musical Shock: the Making of the Musical Shock that premiered in 1921 and everything That Followed (2016). McDonald was the first actress to receive awards in all four acting categories. The Peabody Award-winning CBS show Having Our Say The Delany Sisters The First 100 Years which began to introduce McDonald to TV viewers in her role as a dramatic performer. She went on to co-star with Kathy Bates and Victor Garber in the lauded 1999 television adaptation of Annie and then in 2000 she played a regular role on NBC's hit series Law & Order Special Victims Unit. The following year, she received the first Emmy nomination for her performance on the HBO film version of the Pulitzer Prize winning play Wit, produced by Mike Nichols and starring Emma Thompson McDonald returned on television network in 2003 with the drama about politics Mister Sterling, produced by Emmy Award winner Lawrence O'Donnell Jr. and which starred Josh Brolin. McDonald joined the WB The Bedford Diaries The Bedford Diaries in early 2006. In the following season, she appeared as one of the characters on NBC's TV show Kidnapped. In the year 2016 McDonald was nominated for a fourth Emmy Award due to her performance on HBO's Lady Day at Emerson's Bar Restaurant & Grill, a movie-special. McDonald starred along with Taylor Schilling and Steven Pasquale in The Bite a six-episode pandemic-themed comedy co-produced through Spectrum Originals and CBS Studios in 2021. McDonald first played U.S. lawyer Liz Lawrence (now Liz Reddick), in the CBS law-and-order crime thriller The Good Wife, in 2009. In the year 2018, she reprised that role in The Good Fight for Paramount+ as a series regular. Her performance received three Critics Choice Award Nominations. The actress is currently a guest on Julian Fellowes's historical comedy The Gilded Age on HBO.