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.
Gregory Allen Howard, the first African American screenwriter for a $100 million drama with Remember The Titans, died today in Miami, Florida following a brief illness.
He was 70 and his death was confirmed by his publicist. Howard was also the only African American screenwriter to score a $100 million spec script for Remember the Titans, which starred Denzel Washington and was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer.
His credits included Ali, starring Will Smith and Jamie Foxx, directed by Michael Mannas, as well as the award-winning stage play Tinseltown Trilogy.
Howard was a two-time winner of the NAACP Image Awards, and also won the Christopher Award, the Howard University Paul Robeson Award for artistic excellence, and the Heartland Film Festival Award for screenwriting excellence.
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