WHO IS CYNTHIA ERIVO?

A young singer who first performed in a Christmas play when she was five years old An Oscar-nominated and Tony Awardwinning actor A popular performer known for her roles in Broadway's The Color Purple and the movie Wicked How did a young girl born in South London grow up to be a Tony and Grammy Awardwinning star? Find out in this Who HQ Now biography about Cynthia Erivo and her exciting career from The Color Purple on Broadway to starring as Elphaba in the Wicked movie!

Cynthia Erivo fell in love with performing when she was only five years old and sang "Silent Night" as a solo in a school Christmas play. When she grew up, she trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art before beginning her career as a professional actress and singer. Cynthia made her Broadway debut in 2015 as Celie Harris in The Color Purple. This performance earned her the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical. In 2017, she won her first Grammy Award for the cast album of The Color Purple. Cynthia went on to play Harriet Tubman in the blockbuster film Harriet in 2019. This movie earned Cynthia her first Academy Award nomination as a lead actress. In 2024, Cythia will star as Elphaba in the blockbuster movie muscial Wicked. Crystal Hubbard: I am a mother of four who writes full-time from a suburb outside St. Louis, Missouri. I began my writing career as a newspaper reporter in Boston, but after the birth of my first child, I took a desk job as a sports copy editor at the Boston Herald. With the birth of my second child, I left the Herald in 2002 to pursue a career writing books. My first romance novel and my first picture book manuscripts were contracted in 2004. Both books were released in 2005, and each was nominated for an NAACP Image Award. Catching the Moon: The Story of a Young Girl's Baseball Dream, my first picture book, is an Amazon.com Teacher's Pick. The book was chosen by Academy Award-winning actor/director Kevin Costner to read aloud for Storyline Online, a literacy website. The video has more than five million views on YouTube. I wrote picture books and romance novels until 2011, after the publication of my twelfth romance novel, when I decided to exclusively write books for children. My picture books have been honored with the American Library Association's Amelia Bloomer Project Award, Bank Street College of Education's Best Children's Books of the Year, Florida State Award Masterlist, Smithsonian's Notable Children's Books, Storytelling World Awards, the Evelyn Thurman Young Readers Book Award, and the inaugural 2022 Black KidLit Award. My bibliography also includes numerous educational texts, five Young Adult novels, three middle grade books, three adult novellas, and one anthology of "chiller thriller" tales.