Audra Mc Donald

Audra McDonald is unmatched with the variety and breadth of her talent as an actor and singer. A record-breaking winner of Six Tony Awards two Grammy Awards and the Emmy Award in 2015 she was named as one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people and received the National Medal of Arts--America's most prestigious honor for achievements in the arts--from President Barack Obama. A dazzling soprano, and an unrivalled talent of telling the truth in a dramatic manner She is equally at ease on Broadway and the opera on stage as she is in film and TV roles. As well as her stage work, she has a thriving career in the field of recording and concert artist, regularly performing at top venues around the globe. The daughter of a musician family McDonald grew up in Fresno California and received her classical training at the New York's Juilliard School. In 1994, a year after she graduated from Juilliard School, McDonald was awarded the Tony Award for "Best Performance of a Leading Actress Musical" for Carousel. The following four years she received two additional Tony Awards for the category of the featured actress. She was in Broadway premier productions of Terrence McNally's musical Ragtime as well as Terrence McNally's play Master Class in 1996. That was a staggering amount of three Tony Awards by the time she turned thirty. She was awarded her fourth Tony for her performance in 2004 with Sean Diddy Combs in A Raisin in the Sun and at the end of 2012. In 2012 she was awarded five Tonys, her first in the category of the leading actress for her role as Porgy and Bess in The Gershwins Porgy and Bess as the main character. In 2014 she made Broadway historical records and was named an official Tony Awards most decorated performer after she received her sixth award for her performance in Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill the role that also served as the vehicle for her Olivier Award nominated 2017 debut on the London's West End. Along with setting an all-time record for the amount of Tony Awards an actor has won, she was also the first to win the four categories. McDonald was also on The Secret Garden (1993), Marie Christine (1999), Henry IV (2004), 110 in the Shade (2007 Twelfth night (2009) and Shuffle Along Shuffle Along: Making of the Musical Shock in 1921 as well as Everything That Followed (2016). She was the very first actress to win awards across the four categories of acting. It was the Peabody Award-winning CBS program Having Our Say The Delany Sisters First 100 Years that first introduced McDonald to the television audience as a dramatic actress. In 1999, she co-starred alongside Kathy Bates in ABC's acclaimed remake of Annie. In addition, she played regular roles in NBC's Law & Order Special Victims Unit in 2000. In the wake of receiving her first Emmy nomination for her performance in the HBO film version of the Pulitzer Prize winning play Wit, directed by Mike Nichols and starring Emma Thompson McDonald returned to the network's television program in 2003 on the political drama Mister Sterling, produced by Emmy Award winner Lawrence O'Donnell Jr. and which starred Josh Brolin. At the beginning of 2006, McDonald joined WB's The Bedford Diaries. The next year she was in a regular role on NBC's Kidnapped. McDonald was awarded a fourth Emmy award in recognition of her appearance in HBO's film-special of Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill in 2016. The Bite is a drama featuring six episodes that are based on a pandemic, coproduced with Spectrum Originals & CBS Studios. The show featured her alongside Taylor Schilling & Steven Pasquale. First appearing as U.S. attorney Liz Lawrence in the year 2009 on CBS's legal television drama The Good Wife in 2018 McDonald took on the role (now being dubbed Liz Reddick) as a Season regular on The Good Fight on Paramount+ with three Critics Choice Award nominations for her role. She is currently appearing as a guest on Julian Fellowes' historical drama The Gilded Age, which premieres on HBO.