Audra Mc Donald

Audra is a unique artist because of her range and variety of her talent as a performer and songwriter. She was the recipient of an incredible seven Tony Awards (two Grammy Awards) and an Emmy Award, McDonald was included in Time magazine's list of 100 most influential people of the year 2015. The president also awarded her Obama's National Medal of Arts for her accomplishments. With a soprano of unmatched beauty and a gift of dramatizing the truth the roles she plays in Broadway or in the opera are as comfortable as the roles in movies or on television. Alongside her theatrical work she has a thriving career as a concert and recording performer who regularly appears at most prestigious venues in the world. McDonald was raised in Fresno California by her musical parents. She studied classical music in the Juilliard School, New York. Following her graduation, she was awarded her first Tony Award as Best Performance of a Featured Artist an Musical in the Lincoln Center Theater for Carousel (1994). The following four years, she received two more Tony Awards as a featured actor for her performances as a featured actress in Terrence Mcnally's Broadway debuts Master Class (1996) and Ragtime (1998). Her total of Tony Awards is unprecedented at three prior to the age of 30. She won the fourth Tony in 2004 starring with Sean Diddy Combs in A Raisin in the Sun and at the end of 2012. In 2012, she took home five Tony Awards and was the first award in the category of lead actress due to her performance in The Gershwins Porgy and Bess as the main character. She created Broadway history when she became the most popular Tony Award nominee. In her role in the role of Billie Holiday at Emerson's Bar & Grill as well as the role which also served to launch the career of her Olivier Award nominated debut on the London's West End in 2017, earned her six Tony Awards. As well as making history with the most competitive wins by an actor she also became the first person to receive awards for all four categories of acting. 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 Shuffle Along: the Making of the Musical Shock of 1921 and All That Followed (2016). She was the first to make her Public Theater Shakespeare in the Park debut with Twelfth Night (2009). McDonald made her TV debut in the award-winning Peabody Award winning CBS series Having Our Say - The Delany Sisters's First Hundred Years. McDonald was later cast as a co-star alongside Kathy Bates and Victor Garber in the highly acclaimed 1999 remake by ABC and Disney of Annie and in 2000 she had a recurring role in NBC's smash series Law & Order Special Victims Unit. McDonald's Emmy nominated performance as Emma Thompson on Mike Nichols' HBO film adaptation of Pulitzer Prize winner Wit was directed by Mike Nichols. McDonald's return to television networks began in 2003 in which she co-starred with Josh Brolin in Mister Sterling. Beginning in 2006, she was part of the crew of The Bedford Diaries on the WB. The Bedford Diaries and over the course of the season, she was an recurring role in the NBC television show Kidnapped. McDonald's role in HBO movie Lady Day At Emerson Bar & Grill received her a four-time Emmy nomination in 2016. The Bite will be a six-episode drama about a epidemic co-produced by Spectrum Originals, CBS Studios and Taylor Schilling in 2021. McDonald was U.S. prosecutor Liz Lawrence, a character she first played on CBS's The Good Wife legal drama in the year 2009. It was her turn to reprise the role in 2018as the an episode main character Liz Reddick in Paramount+'s The Good Fight. As a result of the role she played, McDonald received three Critics Choice Award nominations. Presently, she is appearing as a guest on Julian Fellowes' historical drama The Gilded Age, which is telecast on HBO.