Audra McDonald Biography

Audra McDonald is an American singer and four-time Tony Award-winning actress. While well known for her singing abilities, she has won acclaim for her dramatic performances as well.

Audra Ann McDonald was born on July 3, 1970 in Berlin, Germany, and was raised in Fresno, California.

The elder of two daughters, she began to study acting at a young age to counteract her diagnosis as "hyperactive." She studied classical voice as an undergraduate at the Juilliard School of Music, graduating in 1993.

McDonald became a three-time Tony Award winner by the age of 28, placing her alongside Shirley Booth, Gwen Verdon, and Zero Mostel by accomplishing this feat within five years. She received Tonys for her performances in "Carousel", "Master Class", and "Ragtime". She was nominated for another Tony Award for her performance in "Marie Christine" before she won her fourth Tony in 2004 for her role in A Raisin in the Sun. She is now in the company of other four-time Tony Award winning actresses Angela Lansbury, Gwen Verdon, and Mary Martin.

In 2001, she received an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or TV Movie for the HBO film Wit starring Emma Thompson and directed by Mike Nichols.

She also appeared on the television series Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, the short-lived Mister Sterling, and in the television production of Annie (1999) in the role of Daddy Warbucks' secretary Miss Farrell.

McDonald has recorded four solo albums on Nonesuch Records. Her first album, the 1998 Way Back to Paradise, featured songs written by a new generation of musical theatre composers who had achieved varying degrees of prominence in the 1990s, particularly Michael John LaChiusa, Adam Guettel, and Jason Robert Brown. Her subsequent albums, How Glory Goes and Happy Songs have featured more traditional older theater and cabaret songs along with some songs by these new composers. Her fourth album, Build a Bridge, features primarily pop songs by such singer-songwriters as Elvis Costello, Nellie McKay, Neil Young, Rufus Wainwright, and Randy Newman.

She frequently appears in concert and has performed with a number of the most prestigious orchestras worldwide.

McDonald married bassist Peter Donovan in 2000. They have one daughter, Zoe Madeline, named after actresses Zoe Caldwell and (the late) Madeline Kahn.

McDonald is scheduled to perform as Lizzie in the Roundabout Theatre Company's revival of 110 in the Shade directed by Lonny Price at Studio 54 in the spring of 2007.