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 on Aretha Franklin and Portraying Complex Black Women Onscreen (Exclusive)
etonline.comand earning acclaim onscreen with films like and, Cynthia Erivo takes on her biggest role yet: Aretha Franklin. The English actress, who is one Oscar shy of an EGOT, portrays the musical icon in season 3 of , National Geographic’s Emmy-winning anthology series, which depicts the fascinating stories of the world’s most brilliant innovators. “She was the queen in every sense of the word,” Erivo says, adding that portraying her idol is “definitely a big undertaking, but I’ve had a really good time.” Starting in the late 1960s, recounts Franklin’s efforts to record her first album with Atlantic Records and then covers major moments in her career and personal life in the two decades that followed.
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