Audra Mc Donald

Audra is a unique artist because of her range and diversity of her talents as a performer and song writer. The winner of a record-breaking 6 Tony Awards (two Grammy Awards) and an Emmy Award, McDonald was named to Time magazine's list for 100 influential people in the year 2015. In addition, she was awarded President Barack Obama's National Medal of Arts for her achievements. She is equally at home in film, television as well as Broadway. Her luminous soprano will make her an ideal performer on the stage. Her career has been successful as a recording artist and concert performer and regularly performs at many of the top performances around the world. McDonald was born into a musical family in Fresno, CA. She underwent classical vocal training at The Juilliard School of New York. She won her first Tony Award in 1994 for the Best Performance of an Actress in a musical, Carousel which was staged at Lincoln Center Theater. Over the next four years, she took home two more Tony Awards for the category of featured actress. She was in the Broadway premieres Terrence McNally's musical Ragtime as well as Terrence McNally's play Master Class in 1996. This was an incredible number of Tony Awards by the time she turned 30. In 2004 she was nominated to win her 4th Tony Award, starring in A Raisin in the Sun alongside Sean Diddy Combs. And in 2012, her 5th Tony as well as her first win for the category of Leading Actress were won by her role as the main character of The Gershwins Porgy and Bess. She made Broadway historical records in 2014 as she became the highest decorated Tony Award performer. Her portrayal as Billie Holiday at Emerson's Bar & Grill, the role which also served to launch her Olivier Award nominated debut on London's West End in 2017, was the reason she received six awards. The actress also broke the record for the having the most awards received by an actor. Her theater credits comprise The Secret Garden (1993) Marie Christine (99) Henry IV (2007) 110 in the Shade (2008) Twelfth (2009), which was her Public Theater Shakespeare in the Park premiere Shuffle Along or the Making of the Musical sensation in 1921 and All That Followed (2017) Frankie & Johnny in Clair de Lune (2018) and Ohio State Murders 2023. It was the Peabody Award-winning CBS show Having Our Say The Delany Sisters The First 100 Years which first introduced McDonald to the television audience for her performance as a dramatic actor. Her next appearance was as a recurring actor on the NBC show Law & Order Special Victims Unit where she was a part of the cast with Kathy Bates and Victor Garber. McDonald was awarded the first Emmy for her performance on the HBO remake of the Pulitzer Prize winning play Wit directed by Mike Nichols, starring Emma Thompson. In 2003, she returned to television, this time in Mister Sterling produced by Emmy Award-winner Lawrence O'Donnell Jr., which starred Josh Brolin. The Bedford Diaries on the WB in early 2006 and Kidnapped, NBC. In the year 2016, McDonald was nominated for a fourth Emmy Award for her role on HBO's Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill, a special film. She also appeared in 2021 when she was a co-star alongside Taylor Schilling and Steven Pasquale as part of The Bite, a pandemic drama co-produced by Spectrum Originals and CBS Studios. McDonald was first seen in the CBS Legal drama The Good Wife as U.S. attorneys Liz Lawrence and Liz Reddick from 2009 to 2018, reprised these role (now named Liz Reddick) in The Good Fight as a Paramount+ season regular. McDonald was nominated to win three Critics Choice Award awards. She appears as a special character in HBO's The Gilded Age by Julian Fellowes.