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, Chad Hugo Among 819 Pros Invited to Join Motion Picture Academy in Push to Diversify Membership
billboard.comCynthia Erivo, Chad Hugo, Larry Mullen, Patrice Rushen, Arturo Sandoval and Bernie Taupin are among the well-known musicians who have been invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.
The academy invited 819 people to join this year – 45% of them women, 36% underrepresented ethnic/racial minorities and 49% from outside the U.S., according to academy numbers-crunchers.The academy notes that “those who accept the invitations will be the only additions to the academy’s membership in 2020,” an indication that it wants to control who joins its membership—and perhaps to control the demographic numbers.The academy also said that, in a major shift, “the membership status of all artists’ representatives (agents) will change from.
Read more on billboard.com