Audra Mc Donald

Audra Mcdonald stands out as a truly unique artist because of her versatility and range of her talents as an actress and a vocalist. Her record-breaking success includes Six Tony Awards two Grammy Awards and the Emmy Award in 2015 she was named among the top 100 influential people. She also received the National Medal of Art, which is America's highest honor for achievement in the field--from the President Barack Obama. She is equally at home with television, film as well as Broadway. Her luminous soprano will make her an ideal performer on the stage. In addition to her work in the theatre, she maintains a major career as a concert and recording artist, regularly performing at major venues across the globe. McDonald was born in a musical family in California, Fresno. Her classical singing instruction from The Juilliard School of New York. The year 1994 was the year after she graduated from Juilliard School, McDonald was awarded the Tony Award for "Best Performance by a Leading Actress in the Musical" for Carousel. In the following four years she was awarded two additional Tony Awards for the category of featured actress. She performed in Broadway premier productions of Terrence McNally's musical Ragtime and Terrence McNally's show Master Class in 1996. It was an amazing total of three Tony Awards by the time she reached the age of thirty. In 2004 she was in the running for a fourth Tony Award, starring in A Raisin in the Sun with Sean Diddy Combs. And in 2012, her five year old daughter won her first Tony Award in the category of Leading Actress. In that performance, she portrayed the lead role as Porgy and Bess in The Gershwins Porgy and Bess. As the Tony Awards' most decorated actor, she managed to establish Broadway record-breaking history when she took home her sixth Tony Award portraying Billie Holiday as Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill. This performance also served as the basis to make the Olivier Award nominee 2017 London West End debut. In addition, she set the record for most awards received by actors. McDonald's other theater credits includes The Secret Garden (1993) Marie Christine (1999) Henry IV (2004) 110 in the Shade (2007) Twelfth Night (2009) the film that was her Public Theater Shakespeare in the Park debut Shuffle Along or the Making of the Musical Sensation from 1921 along with All That Followed (2016) Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune (2019) and Ohio State Murders (2023). It was the Peabody Award-winning CBS program Having Our Say The Delany Sisters The First 100 Years that was the first to introduce McDonald viewers to her talents in her role as a dramatic performer. After her role as a co-star with Kathy Bates, Victor Garber along with other stars in the well-received Disney/ABC remake of Annie at the end of 1999 McDonald had an recurring role in the network's Law & Order Special Victims Unit. McDonald received her first Emmy due to her character as a character in the HBO version of the Pulitzer Prize winning play Wit directed by Mike Nichols, starring Emma Thompson. In 2003, she returned to television but this time on Mister Sterling produced by Emmy award-winner Lawrence O'Donnell Jr., featuring Josh Brolin. Beginning in 2006 she was part of in the ensemble of the show on WB called The Bedford Diaries and over her next season, she appeared in been a frequent guest on the NBC TV show Kidnapped. McDonald won a 4th Emmy for her portrayal of Lady Day in Emerson's Bar & Grill on HBO in 2016. She was a part of Taylor Schilling and Steven Pasquale in The Bite a six-episode pandemic-themed show co-produced by Spectrum Originals and CBS Studios in 2021. In 2009, she portrayed U.S. Attorney Liz Lawrence on CBS's legal drama The Good Wife. In 2018 McDonald played her character Liz Reddick as a regular on Paramount+'s The Good Fight. She earned three Critics Choice Award nods for this performance. She is currently a guest star in Julian Fellowes' historical drama The Gilded Age, which airs on HBO.