Audra Mc Donald

Audra McDonald is unmatched in the range and variety of her talent as an actress and a performer. As the winner of an incredible seven Tony Awards (two Grammy Awards) and one Emmy Award, McDonald was listed in Time magazine's list for 100 influential people in 2015. She also received President Barack Obama's National Medal of Arts for her work. Due to her stunning soprano's tone and unbeatable ability of telling dramatic tales She has had success in Broadway and in the opera and for television and film. In addition to her work in the theater McDonald has also a thriving career as an internationally acclaimed music and concert performer. McDonald grew in Fresno California, where she was raised by a clan full of musicians. While at the Juilliard School in New York City, McDonald received training as the classical singer. After graduating, she received her first Tony Award as Best Performance of a Featured Artist a Musical at the Lincoln Center Theater for Carousel (1994). Over the next four years she received two additional Tony Awards in the featured actress category, for her roles in The Broadway premieres of Terrence McNally's production Master Class (1996) and the show Ragtime (1998) giving her an unheard of number of Tony Awards before the age of 30. The year 2004, she was awarded the fourth Tony for her role in the musical in which she was a co-star with Sean Diddy Combs in A Raisin in the Sun. In 2012, while she was a lead actress in The Gershwins Porgy and Bess she received five Tony and was awarded the first prize in the lead actor category. In the year she received her Sixth Tony in the year 2014 her performance in Lady Day in Emerson's Bar & Grill was Broadway's highest-rated show. In 2017, she also performed in her West End London West End debut, and was nominated to receive the Olivier Award. In addition to setting a record in which she won the most awards by an acting performance, she also became the first woman to be awarded each of the four categories for acting. Other credits in the theater includes The Secret Garden (1993) Marie Christine (1999) Henry IV (2004) 110 in the Shade (2007) Twelfth Night (2009) in which she made Twelfth Night (2009), which was her Public Theater Shakespeare in the Park debut Shuffle Along or the Making of the Musical Sensation in 1921 as well as All That Followed (2016) Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune (2019) and Ohio State Murders (2023). McDonald was first seen on television in the Peabody Award-winning CBS series Having Our Say - The Delany Sisters' First Hundred years. Her next role was that of a character actor on NBC's Law & Order Special Victims Unit and she was a part of the cast with Kathy Bates and Victor Garber. McDonald won the first Emmy for her role on The HBO version of the Pulitzer Prize winning play Wit written by Mike Nichols, starring Emma Thompson. In 2003 she was back on television but this time on Mister Sterling produced by Emmy Award-winning Lawrence O'Donnell Jr., with Josh Brolin. The Bedford Diaries on the WB in the early part of 2006 as well as Kidnapped, NBC. McDonald received a fourth Emmy for her role as Lady Day in Emerson's Bar & Grill, which aired on HBO in 2016. McDonald starred along with Taylor Schilling and Steven Pasquale in The Bite a six-episode pandemic-themed drama co-produced with Spectrum Originals and CBS Studios in 2021. The actress first appeared in the role of U.S. attorney Liz Lawrence in 2009 on CBS's legal show The Good Wife in 2018 McDonald reprised the character (now called Liz Reddick) as a season regular of The Good Fight on Paramount+ with three Critics Choice Award nominations for her performance. The actress is currently a guest on Julian Fellowes' historical drama The Gilded Age on HBO.