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.
EXCLUSIVE: All pieces have fallen into place for Steel, a thriller drama set in 1970s London, starring and executive produced by Cynthia Erivo (Genius: Aretha Franklin, The Outsider).
The project, teased by MRC Television President Elise Henderson in her Deadline interview in June, will be directed by Francis Lawrence (The Hunger Games franchise) and executive produced by Matt Charman (The Mothership, Bridge of Spies).
It is being taken out to the marketplace by MRC Television and Civic Center Media, the indie studio’s venture with UTA.Written by Adam Gyngell and Fred Fernandez Armesto, Steel chronicles a self-made woman’s rise to power.
Read more on deadline.com