Andra Day Lost 39 Pounds, Started Drinking and Smoking to Play Billie Holiday

Jazz Tangcay Artisans EditorIn Lee Daniel’s upcoming “The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” coming to Hulu on Feb.

Andra Day is being honored at this year's Palm Springs International Film Awards. The singer and actress will be the recipient of the Breakthrough Performance Award for, the festival announced on Friday.«Few jazz vocalists are more beloved than Billie Holiday, and Andra Day brings Holiday and her iconic voice back to life through a sympathetic and nuanced portrayal that sheds new light on the U.S.

The Palm Springs International Film Awards will honor “The United States vs. Billie Holiday” star Andra Day with the 2021 Breakthrough Performance Award, the festival’s organizers announced on Friday.Day will receive the award for her performance as Holiday in the Lee Daniels film about the iconic but tortured jazz singer, who was relentlessly pursued by the FBI while fighting drug addiction in the 1940s and ’50s.

NEW YORK -- Golden Globe nominations for best original song are full of Black Girl Magic, with nominees including R&B singers H.E.R., Celeste and Andra Day, who also earned an acting nod for her portrayal of Billie Holiday.Veteran songwriter Diane Warren and Grammy and Tony winner Leslie Odom Jr. — also a double nominee — round out the nominees for best original song at the Globes, which will air live on Feb.

Among the country's preeminent dramatists, Suzan-Lori Parks has won a 2002 Pulitzer Prize for her play Topdog-Underdog and a 2012 Tony for an adaptation of Porgy and Bess. Along the way Parks, 57, has dipped a toe in Hollywood, as far back as 1996's Girl 6, which she wrote for Spike Lee.

Andra Day gained fame as a singer thanks to her hit anthem “Rise Up”, but she’ll soon be seen making her acting debut in the role of legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday in the Lee Daniels-directed biopic “The United States vs. Billie Holiday”.

Andra Day takes her first acting role very seriously. The Grammy-nominated singer did everything it took to resemble and sound like Billie Holiday in Hulu’s new biopic,  The United States Vs.

Andra Day “abused” her body while getting ready to play Billie Holiday.

Andra Day is opening up about how she prepared to play Billie Holiday in Hulu’s upcoming movie, The United States vs. Billie Holiday.

“When I thought of Billie Holiday, I just thought of her as a jazz singer, maybe a troubled artist, you hear about drugs, a little bit of trouble with the law,” says Lee Daniels, director of the upcoming biopic The United States vs. Billie Holiday. With all that Holiday accomplished during her storied career, rarely highlighted is her work in the civil rights movement of the 1930s and ’40s, which was why Daniels was inspired to tackle this project.

Ramin Setoodeh New York Bureau ChiefGrammy-nominated singer Andra Day had never starred in a movie before she channeled Billie Holiday in a new biopic directed by Lee Daniels.In “The United States Vs. Billie Holiday,” which will be released by Hulu on Feb.

Andra Day (“The United States vs. Billie Holiday”) and Leslie Odom Jr.

“[Bille Holiday] was such an avant-garde [figure], so it was trying to pull things that seemed new. There are so many pictures of her, it’s wild.

Joe Biden’s inauguration concerts continue tonight with one tied to the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, with a lineup that includes Yo-Yo Ma, Andra Day and Bebe Winans.

Jon Stewart and Andra Day will be among the participants in the reimagined inauguration parade, a virtual event dubbed Parade Across America.

The United States vs Billie Holiday, starring Bird Box's Trevante Rhodes and Russian Doll and Orange is the New Black actress Natasha Lyonne, has landed and it promises to be a moving watch. The film tells the story of the life and career of iconic singer Billie Holiday, who is considered one of the greatest jazz and swing musicians of all time.

Andra Day hesitates in singing a song on stage as police officers wait to arrest her in the trailer for Hulu’s upcoming movie, The United States vs. Billie Holiday.

On a list of Civil Rights movement leaders, few people would think to name Billie Holiday. But in his new movie, The United States vs Billie Holiday, starring Andra Day, Lee Daniels shines a light on that facet of the jazz singer’s story, in which Holiday’s 1939 song about lynching, "Strange Fruit," made her a target of the FBI.