Audra McDonald
Audra McDonald was born in West Berlin, Germany on July 3rd, 1970 and is the Stage Actress. At the age of 53, Audra McDonald biography, profession, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, measurements, education, career, dating/affair, family, news updates, TV shows, and networth are available.
At 53 years old, Audra McDonald has this physical status:
Audra Ann McDonald (born July 3, 1970) is an American actress and singer.
Primarily known for her performances on Broadway, she has received six Tony Awards, more appearance awards than any other actress, and she is the only one to win all four acting categories.
She has appeared in musicals, operas, and dramas including A Moon for the Misbegotten, 110 in the Shade, Carousel, Ragtime, Master Class, and Porgy and Bess. She has appeared in staged operas with the Houston Grand Opera and the Los Angeles Opera, as well as in concert with symphony orchestras like the Berlin Philharmonic and New York Philharmonic.
Kurt Weill's Rise and Fall of Mahagonny with the Los Angeles Opera received the Grammy Award for Best Classical Album and Best Opera Recording in 2008.
She has a close working relationship with composer Michael John LaChiusa, who has written several books for her, including the Broadway musical Marie Christine (who is she? ). i love you) and The Seven Deadly Sins: A Song Cycle.
She has performed live in the United States for almost a decade, from classical to jazz and popular songs, with her full lyric soprano voice.
President Barack Obama presented McDonald with the National Medal of Arts in 2016.
McDonald was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2017.On television, she portrayed Dr. Donnell.
Naomi Bennett, a main cast member of Shonda Rhimes' ABC television drama Private Practice from 2007-2011, is the main cast member.
Liz Lawrence appears in Season 4 of The Good Wife, a role in which she reprises as a leading cast member in the spinoff series The Good Fight.
In 2013, she appeared as Mother Superior in The Sound of Music Live! Maria is opposite Carrie Underwood.
She has twice been selected for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for her role as Susie Monahan in Wit opposite Emma Thompson in 2001 and 2008, and for her appearance of Ruth Younger in A Raisin in the Sun.
In 2016, she was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie as well as a Screen Actors Guild Award for her role in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill, in which McDonald portrayed jazz legend Billie Holiday.
In 2015, she received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Class Program for her role as the program's host. In the 2017 film version of Disney's Beauty and the Beast, she is best known for her portrayals of Maureen in Ricki and the Flash (2015).
She has been nominated five times for the NAACP Image Awards for her work in television and film.
Early life and education
McDonald was born in West Berlin, Germany, the daughter of American parents, Anna Kathryn (Jones), a university administrator, and Stanley James McDonald Jr., a high school principal. Her father was stationed with the United States Army at the time of her birth. McDonald was born in Fresno, California, the elder of two children; her sister, Alison, writes and directs television and film. McDonald graduated from Theodore Roosevelt High School in Fresno's Roosevelt School of the Arts program.
She got her start with Dan Pessano and Roger Rocka's Good Company Players, starting in their junior company. She said she wanted to be involved in theater "when I had the opportunity to perform with the Good Company Players Junior Company" as a child, according to a feature article about her. "Good Company director Dan Pessano and my mother are two people who have had the most influence on her life," she said. She studied classical voice as an undergraduate at the Juilliard School, under Ellen Faull's guidance, graduating in 1993.
Personal life
In September 2000, McDonald married bassist Peter Donovan. They have one daughter, Zoe Madeline Donovan, named after McDonald's close friend and Master Class co-star Zoe Caldwell and the late Madeline Kahn. McDonald and Kahn became close friends after they shot a TV pilot together, and she discovered a baby the day she sang at Kahn's memorial. In 2009, McDonald and Donovan separated.
Will Swenson was married on October 6, 2012. Sally James McDonald-Swenson, their daughter, was born on October 19, 2016. She is the stepmother to Swenson's two sons from his previous marriage.
McDonald attended Joan Rivers' funeral in New York on September 7, 2014, where she sang "Smile" at her Joan Rivers' funeral.
McDonald lives in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, with her family.
Career
McDonald, a three-time Tony Award winner in Carousel, Master Class, and Ragtime, bringing her along Shirley Booth, Gwen Verdon, and Zero Mostel by achieving this feat within five years. She was nominated for another Tony Award for her role in Marie Christine before winning her fourth in 2004 for her role in A Raisin in the Sun, placing her in the company of then four-time winners actress Angela Lansbury. She reprised her Raisin appearance in a 2008 television film, earning her her second Emmy Award nomination. McDonald received her fifth Tony Award for her role as Bess in Broadway's Porgy and Bess, tying Angela Lansbury and Julie Harris on June 10, 2012. McDonald earned her her sixth Tony award and made her the first person to win all four acting categories in 2014 after her appearance in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill.
In the 2007 revival of 110 in the Shade, directed by Lonny Price at Studio 54, for which she received the Drama Desk Award for Best Actress in a Musical with Donna Murphy, McDonald appeared as Lizzie. When she was in previews for the show, her father was killed when an experimental plane he was flying north of Sacramento, California, killing her father.
McDonald is known for defying racial stereotypecasting in her various Tony Award-winning and -nominated roles. Carrie Pipperidge's 1994 appearance in Nicholas Hytner's revival of Carousel and Lizzie Curry in Lonny Price's 2007 revival of 110 in the Shade made her the first black woman to play those traditionally white roles in a major Broadway production. In an interview with The New York Times, she discussed her pioneering work in musical theatre casting, saying, "I refuse to be stereotyped." If I feel I am qualified for a position, I will go for it in whatever way I can. I refuse to say no to myself. I can't predict what a producer will do or say, but I can at least put myself out there." In a Talk of the Country interview with actress Thom Sesma, McDonald's appearance in Carousel "transcended any kind of person at all," proving her to be "more actress than African-American."
McDonald has appeared in opera before. She appeared at the Houston Grand Opera in 2006, making her opera debut there. (I adore you). She appeared in the world premiere of John Adams' I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky, which was presented in concert, and she can be seen on the opera's 1997 recording. Jenny Smith appeared in Kurt Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny at the Los Angeles Opera in 2007. In 2009, she was recognized and received the Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording. She appeared in a revised version of George Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess at the American Repertory Theatre (in Cambridge, Massachusetts), from August to September 2011, and appeared on Broadway at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, which opened on January 12, 2012 and closed on September 23, 2012. McDonald received her fifth Tony Award and first in a Leading Actress category for this role. "Suzan-Lori Parks and Diedre Murray's "reimagined" this American Repertory Theater performance as a contemporary audience performer.
She appeared in Lynn Nottage's short film Poof! with Tonya Pinkins in 2014. Playing On Air produced it for radio and podcast.
In Eugene O'Neill's play A Moon for the Misbegotten in August 2015, she co-starring with her husband Will Swenson.
McDonald appeared on Broadway in a new musical titled Shuffle Along, or, the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921. All That Followed traces the 1921 musical Shuffle Along's production. Shuffle started on July 24, 2016, and McDonald announced a maternity hiatus at the time. Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune in 2019, earning her ninth Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a Play.
In the play Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill, McDonald performed Billie Holiday on Broadway in a limited engagement that ended on August 10, 2014. Following previews that began on March 25, 2014, the performance at the Circle in the Square Theatre opened on April 13, 2014. In an interview, McDonald discussed the play: In an interview, she said he was discussing it.
McDonald received the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for this role, making her the first person to receive six Tony Award nominations for acting (not counting honorary awards) and the first person to win a Tony Award in all four acting categories. "She thanked her parents for urging her to pursue her childhood's interests as a child," the mother said in her acceptance address. In part, Lena Horne thanked the "strong, brave, and courageous" African-American women who came before her, saying, "I am standing on Lena Horne's shoulders." I am standing on Maya Angelou's shoulders. I'm protesting Diahann Carroll and Ruby Dee, as well as Billie Holidays. When you were on this planet, you deserved so much more than you were given. This is for you, Billie. On March 12, 2016, this performance was shot at Cafe Brasil in New Orleans and aired on HBO. McDonald received an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie in 2016 for her role in the program.
McDonald had intended to attend her West End debut in Lady Day from June to September 2016, but she cancelled plans after becoming pregnant. She appeared on Lady Day in June 2017 through September 9, 2017 at the Wyndham's Theatre in the West End.
McDonald has kept links to her classical education and repertoire. She appears in concert throughout the United States and has appeared with musical groups such as the New York Philharmonic and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Carnegie Hall commissioned The Seven Deadly Sins: A Song Cycle for McDonald, and she performed it at Carnegie's Zankel Hall on June 2, 2004. In March 2006, she appeared in two solo one-act operas at the Houston Grand Opera (Francis Poulenc's La voix humaine and Michael John LaChiusa's Send (who are you?) I adore you so much. McDonald appeared in Patti LuPone's opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, directed by John Doyle, on February 10, 2007. In February 2009, Mahagonny's recording received two Grammy Awards for Best Opera Recording and Best Classical Album.
Michael John LaChiusa, an American composer, was listed in Opera News Online in September 2008 as working on a Bizet's Carmen with McDonald in mind.
McDonald has released five solo albums on Nonesuch Records. The 1998 Way Back to Paradise featured songs by a new generation of musical theatre composers, including LaChiusa, Adam Guettel, and Jason Robert Brown, among others, who had achieved varying degrees of success in the 1990s.
How Glory Goes (2000), Margaret Arlen's debut album, mixed old and new works, as well as composers Harold Arlen, Leonard Bernstein, and Jerome Kern. Happy Songs (2002), her third album, was a big band sound from the 1920s to the 1940s. Build a Bridge (2006), her fourth album, features songs from jazz and pop.
Audra McDonald released Go Back Home, her first solo album in seven years, in May 2013, with a title track from Kander & Ebb's The Scottsboro Boys. McDonald appeared at Avery Fisher Hall in New York City, which aired on the PBS series Live from Lincoln Center titled Audra McDonald In Concert: Go Back Home.
McDonald performed America the Greatest for the sold-out stadium audience at the 2010 BCS National Championship Game on January 7, the last game of the college football season, was held in the United States.
Audra McDonald appeared as "The Beggar Woman" in Lonny Price's concert version of Stephen Sondheim's "The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," with George Hearn and Patti LuPone of the New York Philharmonic. She appeared in several performances of the Lincoln Center concert production in March 2014, this time opposite Bryn Terfel and Emma Thompson. In November 2015, she appeared in three concerts titled "Audra McDonald Sings Broadway," which also included "The Facebook Song" by Kate Miller-Heidke.
McDonald has appeared on television and film, both musical and dramatic. Daryush Shokof's Seven Servants debut in 1996. She appeared in The Object of My Affection and Cradle Will Rock in 1999 as Daddy Warbucks' secretary and soon-to-be wife, Miss Farrell, and in the television film Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years. McDonald appeared in two episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and in the television film The Last Debate.
For the HBO film Wit, which starred Emma Thompson and was directed by Mike Nichols in 2001, she received her first Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Support Actress in a Miniseries or Movie.
McDonald appeared in It Runs in the Family in 2003, and as Jackie Brock in nine episodes of short-lived Mister Sterling. She appeared in numerous television series and films, including The Bedford Diaries and Kidnapped, from 2005 to 2013, including Merrin Dungey, a spinoff of Grey's Anatomy. In the annual New Year's Eve gala concert on December 31, 2006, she performed with the New York Philharmonic, which featured music from the movies; it was broadcast on Live from Lincoln Center by PBS.
McDonald starred in the critically acclaimed television film A Raisin in the Sun in 2008 and was nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie, as well as the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Television Movie.
McDonald has been host of Live from Lincoln Center since 2012, for which she received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Class Program with the show's developers for Sweeney Todd.
McDonald appeared in HBO's Six by Sondheim in 2013, and she played Mother Abbess in the 2013 NBC live television broadcast of The Sound of Music Live!
Billie Holiday appeared in the film version of Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill, for which she received critical acclaim. She was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie, as well as the Screen Actor Guild Award for Outstanding Female Actor in a Television Movie or Limited Series.
McDonald appeared in Walt Disney Pictures' Beauty and the Beast in 2017, winning a certificate from the NAACP for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture.
She was confirmed to the main cast of The Good Fight's second season on August 1, 2017, reprising her role as Liz Lawrence from season 4 of The Good Wife. McDonald joined the cast for the next two seasons, and he was nominated twice for the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series.
In 2020, McDonald portrayed Rachel Boutella in TV series The Bite and hosted the 74th Tony Awards' television presentation.
Barbara Siggers Franklin of Aretha Franklin's biographical musical drama film Respect in 2021, receiving a nomination from the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture.
Dorothy Scott appeared in HBO's television series The Gilded Age in 2022.