Audra Mc Donald

Audra is a singular artist in terms of the range and range of her skills as a performer and song writer. Audra McDonald, who won six Tony Awards in a row and two Grammy Awards in 2015 was named as one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People. President Barack Obama also awarded her the National Medal of Arts -the highest honor in America to recognize achievements in the field. A luminous singer with an extraordinary gift for emotional truth-telling Ms. O'Connor is at ease in Broadway and on the stage of opera and on the world of television. In addition to her work in the theater McDonald has also a thriving career as an international musician and recording artist. McDonald was born into a musically inclined family in Fresno, CA. She was a classical singer who received training from her school, the Juilliard School of New York. She was awarded her first Tony Award in 1994 for the best performance of an Actress in a musical, Carousel in the Lincoln Center Theater. In the following four years, she received two additional Tony Awards in the featured actress category, for her roles in the Broadway premier of Terrence McNally's play Master Class (1996) and the Musical Ragtime (1998) giving her an unprecedented total of three Tony Awards before the age of 30. In 2004, she received her fourth Tony acting alongside Sean Diddy Combs in A Raisin in the Sun and in 2012 she received her fifth--and her first for the category of leading actress for her title role performance in The Gershwins Porgy and Bess. As the Tony Awards' most decorated actor, she managed to create Broadway history when she received the sixth Tony Award portraying Billie Holiday as Lady Day in Emerson's Bar & Grill. This performance also served as the basis to make her Olivier Award nominee 2017 London West End debut. As well as setting the record for most performances that an actor has won in a competition she was also the first person to receive the award across all four categories. McDonald has also been featured for theatre shows, including The Secret Garden (1993) Marie Christine (1999), Henry IV 2004 110 in the Shade (2006) Twelfth Nigh (2009); this was her Public Theater Shakespeare in the Park debut shuffle Along Or The Making of the Musical Sense of 1921, and all That Followed (16) Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune (192019) and Ohio State Murders (2023) McDonald made her TV debut with the award-winning Peabody Award-winning CBS drama Having Our Say - The Delany Sisters's First Hundred years. The next time she appeared on television was that of a character actor on the NBC show Law & Order Special Victims Unit and she starred alongside Kathy Bates and Victor Garber. After receiving her debut Emmy award for her role in the HBO film adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize winning play Wit written by Mike Nichols and starring Emma Thompson McDonald returned on television network in 2003 on the drama about politics Mister Sterling, produced by Emmy Award winner Lawrence O'Donnell Jr. and with Josh Brolin. Then, in the beginning of 2006, she joined the cast of the show on WB called The Bedford Diaries and over the course of the season, she was the role of a regular on the NBC television show Kidnapped. McDonald's character in HBO production Lady Day At Emerson Bar & Grill received the actress a fourth Emmy nomination in 2016. She starred alongside Taylor Schilling and Steven Pasquale in The Bite a six-episode pandemic-themed drama co-produced with Spectrum Originals and CBS Studios in 2021. McDonald initially played U.S. lawyer Liz Lawrence (now Liz Reddick), in the CBS Legal thriller The Good Wife, in 2009. In 2018 she reprised that role in The Good Fight for Paramount+ as a regular in the series. She received three Critics Choice Award Nominations. She is currently a guest star in Julian Fellowes' historical drama The Gilded Age, which is telecast on HBO.