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.
Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson joined me virtually as part of the MGM/United Artists Releasing presentation at the Deadline Contenders Film: London event taking place today in front of an audience of awards voters in England and serving as a launch to this Oscar season.If there was ever a performance deserving of consideration it would have to be what Hudson does in this role, but it was no easy journey to get to a place where it could actually happen.
Well it has, and Hudson clearly made her mark in portraying the Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin in the movie biopic Respect.It comes on the heels of NatGeo’s limited series Genius: Aretha, which earned Cynthia Erivo an Emmy nomination.
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