Audra Mc Donald

Audra is a unique artist with regard to the scope and variety of her talent as a performer and song writer. She has been a six-time record recipient at her Tony Awards, two Grammy Awards, and an Emmy Award she received in 2015 from Barack Obama. As a result of her soprano's luminous tone and unbeatable ability of telling compelling stories, she has found success on Broadway and in the opera as well as for television and film. Alongside performing on stage, she has established a successful career which includes a significant concert and record-making career. She regularly performs at the most prestigious venues. Born into a musical family McDonald grew up in Fresno California and received her classical vocal training at the New York's Juilliard School. After graduating, she received the first Tony Award as Best Performance of a Featured Artist musical at the Lincoln Center Theater for Carousel (1994). In the following four years, being in the Broadway premieres of Master Class by Terrence M. McNally (1996) in addition to Ragtime (1998) and Ragtime (1998), she earned two additional Tony Awards. In 2004, she took home her fourth Tony when she starred in A Raisin in the Sun along with Sean Diddy Combs. Then in 2013, she brought home her 5th Tony, and also her first award in the Leading actress category. When she won the Sixth Tony in the year 2014, the role of Billie Holiday in Lady Day in Emerson's Bar & Grill has become the most prestigious Broadway production. In 2017, she also was the first to make the West End London West End debut, and was also nominated for the Olivier Award. Along with setting records for the highest number of wins in an award-giving area by an actor she was also the first to win awards for the four acting categories. McDonald's theater credits also includes The Secret Garden (1993) Marie Christine (99) Henry IV (2007) 110 in the Shade (2008) Twelfth (2009) The Twelfth, her Public Theater Shakespeare in the Park debut, Shuffle Along or The Making of the Musical sensation in 1921 and All That Followed (2017) Frankie and Johnny in Clair de Lune (2018) as well as Ohio State Murders 2023. McDonald was first introduced to the television audience as a dramatic actor in Peabody Award winning CBS's Having Our Say the Delany Sisters first 100 years. McDonald was later cast as a co-star with Kathy Bates and Victor Garber in the critically acclaimed 1999 television adaptation of Annie and in 2000 she played a regular role in NBC's smash series Law & Order Special Victims Unit. After receiving her first Emmy award for her performance on the HBO film adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize winning play Wit, written by Mike Nichols and starring Emma Thompson McDonald returned to television networks in 2003 on the drama about politics Mister Sterling, produced by Emmy Award winner Lawrence O'Donnell Jr. and with Josh Brolin. The Bedford Diaries, a WB television show that premiered in 2006. Then she had an recurring role on NBC's Kidnapped in the year following. McDonald's performance in the HBO film Lady Day At Emerson Bar Restaurant earned the actress a fourth Emmy nomination in the year 2016. She also appeared in 2021 when she starred alongside Taylor Schilling and Steven Pasquale as part of The Bite, a pandemic drama co-produced by Spectrum Originals and CBS Studios. McDonald has a brief appearance in the CBS Legal drama The Good Wife as U.S. attorneys Liz Lawrence and Liz Reddick from 2009 to 2018, reprised these roles (now called Liz Reddick) in The Good Fight in the role of the Paramount+ season regular. McDonald has been nominated to win Three Critics Choice Award awards. She is currently appearing as a guest on Julian Fellowes' historical drama The Gilded Age, which premieres on HBO.