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 is among the headliners at the 2020 edition of Philadelphia’s Wawa Welcome America music festival, which, for the first year ever, went completely virtual.
The Oscar-nominated “Harriet” star performed at Philadelphia’s Metropolitan Opera House, playing to an empty theatre while backed with an orchestra divided by plexiglas partitions.
RELATED: Cynthia Erivo Dedicates Stunning Cover Of Mariah Carey’s ‘Hero’ To Frontline Workers Tackling Coronavirus Crisis Among the songs she sang was the classic “Summertime”, from iconic Broadway musical “Porgy and Bess”.
Other songs included Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come” and “Stand Up”, her Oscar-nominated song from the “Harriet” soundtrack.
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