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 was the recipient of an incredible seven Tony Awards (two Grammy Awards) and an Emmy Award, McDonald was included in the Time Magazine's list of 100 influential people in 2015. The president also awarded her Barack Obama's National Medal of Arts for her achievements. Due to her beautiful tone, and unbeatable ability to tell dramatic stories, she has found success in Broadway as well as at the opera, as well as in both film and television. She has a successful career as a recording artist and concert performer, appearing regularly at some of the most prestigious places around the world. McDonald was raised in a musical family from Fresno in California. She was a classical singer who received instruction from her school, the Juilliard School of New York. Following her graduation, she received the very first Tony Award for Best Performance of a Featured Actress a Musical for Carousel at Lincoln Center Theater (1994). Over the next four years she was awarded two additional Tony Awards for the category of featured actress. The show she was in the Broadway premier productions of Terrence McNally's musical Ragtime and Terrence McNally's show Master Class in 1996. This was an incredible total of three Tony Awards by the time she was thirty. In 2004 she won her fourth Tony for her role as Sean Diddy Combs in A Raisin in the Sun and in 2012, she took home the fifth time and first time in the lead actress category for her performance as the title character for her role in The Gershwins Porgy and Bess. One of the Tony Awards most-decorated performer in 2014 was Billie Holiday, who she performed as the title character in Lady Day At Emerson's Bar & Grill. This is exactly the role she portrayed during her performance in 2017's West End London debut for which she was nominated for an Olivier Award. As well as recording the record for the highest number of competitive wins by an actor she was also the first to win honors for all four categories of acting. McDonald was also seen in The Secret Garden (1993), Marie Christine (1999), Henry IV (2004) as well as 110 in the Shade (2007 Twelfth night (2009) and Shuffle Along A Story of the Making of the Musical Shock of 1921 and All That Followed (2016). McDonald made her Public Theater Shakespeare in the Park debut with Twelfth Night (2009). McDonald was first seen on TV as a dramatic actor on The Peabody Award winner CBS series Having Our Say - The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years. After starring with Kathy Bates, Victor Garber as well as others in the critically famous Disney/ABC version of Annie in 1999, McDonald was been a regular character in NBC's Law & Order Special Victims Unit. McDonald received her debut Emmy for her performance as a character in the HBO adaptation 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 winner Lawrence O'Donnell Jr., which starred Josh Brolin. Then, in the year 2006, McDonald appeared on WB's The Bedford Diaries. The next year, she appeared as an actor who appeared on NBC's Kidnapped. McDonald was awarded the 4th Emmy nomination in recognition of her part in HBO's film special of Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill in the year 2016. She also appeared in 2021 when she starred in a telecast with Taylor Schilling and Steven Pasquale as part of The Bite, a pandemic film produced by Spectrum Originals and CBS Studios. McDonald played U.S. prosecutor Liz Lawrence in the first episode of her role appeared on CBS's The Good Wife legal drama in 2009. It was her turn to reprise the role in 2018, as an episode the regular Liz Reddick in Paramount+'s The Good Fight. For her performance, McDonald received three Critics Choice Award nominations. She is also a character for HBO's The Gilded Age by Julian Fellowes.