Cynthia Onyedinmanasu Chinasaokwu Erivo (born 8 January 1987) is an English actress, singer, and songwriter.
She is known for her performance as Celie in the Broadway revival of The Color Purple, for which she won the 2016 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical, the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album, and the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Musical Performance in a Daytime Program, the latter two she shared with the rest of the cast.
Erivo ventured into films in 2018, with roles in the heist film Widows and the thriller Bad Times at the El Royale. In 2019, she portrayed abolitionist Harriet Tubman in the biopic Harriet, for which she earned nominations for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
Cynthia Erivo: How The ‘Music Geek’ Prepared For Her Emmy Nominated Portrayal Of Aretha Franklin
hollywoodlife.comCynthia Erivo is revealing how intently she studied Aretha Franklin before she portrayed the legend for the National Geographic mini-series about the singer’s life.
The 34-year-old Brit – who has been nominated for an Emmy for her starring role in Genius: Aretha – says she researched everything from the Queen of Soul’s speech patterns to when she took a breath when singing her hits. “It [was] definitely a big challenge just because of how much of learning needed to happen,” Cynthia tells HollywoodLife. “I am a bit of a music geek so, when I had to learn music, because I had to learn it the way she would sing it, I would sit for hours and hours and learn the songs. “And, it wasn’t just about learning the lyrics, and not just about learning
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