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.
#Grammys pic.twitter.com/KrWryQD1ck— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) February 3, 2025RAYE was nominated for two Grammy awards this year, Best New Artist and Songwriter of the Year, Non-Classical.
Chappell Roan won Best New Artist, while Amy Allen won the Songwriter of the Year, Non-Classical category.RAYE’s road to success has been rocky, with multi-BRIT winner speaking to NME in 2022 about her label struggles, saying: “When you sign with a record label, technically they work for you: you’re signing to a company for them to work for your career and take you to that next level.“But as a woman, it just doesn’t feel like that.
It feels like you’re working for them. And you know, some of the things I had to put my body through to even be able to that… it’s really quite sad.”Upon accepting her Best New Artist award, Chappell Roan made a daring acceptance speech demanding better protections for up-and-coming artists.She said: “I told myself that if I ever won a Grammy and got to stand up here before the most powerful people in music, I would demand that labels in the industry profiting millions of dollars off of artists would offer a liveable wage and health care, especially developing artists.”This year, comedian Trevor Noah returned to host the event for the fifth consecutive year as Beyoncé led the way with 11 nominations, making her the most nominated artist in the awards’ history – she won the biggest award of the night, Album Of The Year, for ‘Cowboy Carter’ marking her first win in the category.Billie Eilish, Charli XCX, Chappell Roan, and Sabrina Carpenter all performed, while British artists Cynthia Erivo and Coldplay’s Chris Martin also joined the line-up..
Read more on nme.com