Audra Mc Donald

Audra Mcdonald stands out in her breadth of talent and her versatility as an actor and singer. She has been a six-time record recipient at the Tony Awards, two Grammy Awards as well as an Emmy Award she received in 2015 from Barack Obama. A stunning singer, with an unmatched gift of emotional truth-telling Ms. O'Connor has a natural in Broadway and on the stage for opera as well as on the world of television. Alongside her theatrical work she maintains a major career as a concert and recording artist who performs regularly at top venues around the globe. McDonald was born in Fresno California to a music family, received the classical vocal training she received in New York's Juilliard School. When she graduated, she won her very first Tony Award as Best Performance by an Featured Artist in a Musical at the Lincoln Center Theater for Carousel (1994). Over the next four years, she was awarded two additional Tony Awards as a featured actor for her performances on Terrence Mcnally's Broadway debuts Master Class (1996) and Ragtime (1998). She has a total number of Tony Awards is unprecedented at three before age thirty. The year 2004, she won her 4th Tony for her performance in the role that she portrayed alongside Sean Diddy Combs in A Raisin in the Sun. In 2012, while she was a lead actor for the role of Porgy and Bess in The Gershwins Porgy and Bess she received the fifth Tony and also won her first prize in the lead actor category. When she won the 6th Tony award in 2014, Billie Holiday's portrayal of the role Lady Day in Emerson's Bar & Grill was Broadway's highest-rated production. In 2017 she was the first to make her West End London West End debut and was nominated for an Olivier Award. Along with setting the record in the competition in which she won the most Tony Awards by acting performance, she also became the first person to win each of the four categories for acting. McDonald is also featured in The Secret Garden (1993), Marie Christine (1999), Henry IV (2004), 110 In The Shade (2007 Twelfth night (2009) and Shuffle Along Shuffle Along: A Story of the Making of the Musical Shock in 1921 as well as Everything That Followed (2016). She also made her Public Theater Shakespeare in the Park debut with Twelfth Night (2009). McDonald made her television debut with the award-winning Peabody Award-winning CBS drama Having Our Say - The Delany Sisters's First 100 years. After that, in 1999, she costarred alongside Kathy Bates and Victor Garber on the ABC/Disney television version of Annie. Then, in 2000, she played an recurring role on the NBC program Law & Order Special Victims Unit. McDonald, who was awarded an Emmy Award nomination back in 1999 for her performance as a character in an HBO adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning film Wit which was written and performed by Emma Thompson, made her return to the network in 2003 with the drama about politics Mister Sterling. The film was produced by Emmy Award-winning Lawrence O'Donnell Jr. Early in 2006, McDonald joined the WB's The Bedford Diaries. The next year, she appeared as a recurring actor on NBC's Kidnapped. McDonald received a fourth Emmy for her portrayal of Lady Day in Emerson's Bar & Grill on HBO in 2016. In 2021, she was a co-star with Taylor Schilling and Steven Pasquale in the film The Bite, a pandemic drama that was co-produced between Spectrum Originals and CBS Studios. McDonald first played U.S. lawyer Liz Lawrence (now Liz Reddick), in the CBS law-and-order thriller The Good Wife, in 2009. In 2018 she reprised the role on The Good Fight for Paramount+ as a series regular. Her performance received three Critics Choice Award Nominations. Presently, she is acting as a guest in Julian Fellowes' historical drama The Gilded Age, which is telecast on HBO.