Audra McDonald

Audra McDonald

Audra McDonald is unparalleled in the breadth and versatility of her artistry as both a singer and an actor. The winner of a record-breaking six Tony Awards, two Grammy Awards and an Emmy Award, in 2015 she was named one of Timemagazine’s 100 most influential people and received the National Medal of Arts—America’s highest honor for achievement in the field—from President Barack Obama. Blessed with a luminous soprano and an incomparable gift for dramatic truth-telling, she is as much at home on Broadway and the opera stage as in her film and television roles. Alongside her theatrical work, she maintains a major career as a concert and recording artist, regularly appearing at the world’s foremost venues.

Born into a musical family, McDonald grew up in Fresno, California, and received her classical vocal training at New York’s Juilliard School. A year after graduating, she won her first Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical for Carousel at Lincoln Center Theater (1994). Over the next four years, she received two additional Tony Awards in the featured actress category for her performances in the Broadway premieres of Terrence McNally’s play Master Class(1996) and his musical Ragtime (1998), making an unprecedented total of three Tony Awards before the age of 30. In 2004 she won her fourth Tony, starring alongside Sean “Diddy” Combs in A Raisin in the Sun, and in 2012 she won her fifth—and her first in the leading actress category—for her title role performance in The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess. In 2014 she made Broadway history and became the Tony Awards’ most decorated performer when she won her sixth award for her portrayal of Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill—the role that also served as the vehicle for her Olivier Award-nominated 2017 debut in London’s West End. As well as setting the record for most competitive wins by an actor, she also became the first person to receive awards in all four acting categories. McDonald’s other theater credits include The Secret Garden (1993); Marie Christine (1999); Henry IV (2004); 110 in the Shade (2007); Twelfth Night (2009), which marked her Public Theater Shakespeare in the Park debut; Shuffle Along, or, The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed (2016); Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune (2019); and Ohio State Murders (2023).