Mary Chieffo

Mary Chieffo

Mary Chieffo is a queer actor/producer known internationally as the Klingon Commander turned Chancellor L'Rell on the award-winning Paramount+ series Star Trek: Discovery, most recently returning as her iconic character for the highly popular Star Trek Online. When she wasn't covered in prosthetics and speaking Klingon, Mary produced, wrote, and starred as Iago in Operation Othello - a feminist, gender, and color-conscious Virtual Reality adaptation of Shakespeare's Othello alongside Viola Davis and Julius Tennon's JuVee Productions in the spring of 2018 (Official Cannes XR and Raindance XR Selection). Chieffo received her BFA from Juilliard in 2015, flourishing in her passion for classic text and reveling in the opportunity to take on strong female and male roles in Shakespeare canon, including King Lear, Queen Elizabeth, and the title role in Erica Schmidt's all-female Macbeth. For her exceptional work in the four-year program, Juilliard presented Mary with the prestigious Elizabeth Smith Voice and Speech Prize and the Saint-Denis Prize for "Outstanding Achievement and Leadership in Drama." After graduation, she reprised her role in Schmidt's Macbeth for Seattle Repertory Theatre's The Other Season and explored the role of Iago for the first time in Harlem Shakespeare Festival's all-female Othello. She also participated in workshops of Lover, Beloved: An Evening With Carson McCullers - a one-woman show written by Grammy Award-winning Suzanne Vega and Tony- and Grammy Award-winning Duncan Sheik. She performed the piece at The Sherry Theatre in Los Angeles and The Alley Theatre in Houston, TX. In 2019, Chieffo returned to the LA stage starring in the Bespoke Plays workshopped reading of Analogue by esteemed television writer Christine Boylan (The Punisher, Cloak & Dagger) as well as the XR stage for Peter Flaherty's Empire at Sea, an Augmented Reality project produced by Intel (Tribeca Film Festival Official Selection). She was also featured as a special guest star in Ripley Improv's GLAM and the most recent season of The Improvised Generation at the long-form genre-based Impro Studio in Los Feliz, where she went on to become a member of their rigorous Conservatory program. In the spring of 2020, Mary developed and directed Closed Circuit, a new play premiering at the NYC Frigid Festival (WINNER Best Original Script). In the fall, Chieffo produced, hosted and guest-starred in Ripley Improv's Heartbeats - "a fully improvised medical dramedy" directed by Jessica Lynn Verdi - streaming live on Twitch for eight weeks in a row. After a second run of Heartbeats at the beginning of 2021, Chieffo appeared as Dr. Elizabeth Diamond, PhD in Ripley's new monster-hunting genre SLAY, directed by Aliza Pearl. Mary stretched her directing muscles again in March of 2021, shaping Ryan McCurdy's musical one-man show Whiterock Cliff entirely remotely. Featuring 8 instruments and 3 cameras in one studio space, the piece had a successful run Off-Broadway via the Five OHM streaming platform. In the fall of 2021, Mary returned to New York for the launch of the Bespoke Plays' third season of bicoastal workshopped readings as producer and performer in Ellie Pyle's new play Heretics. She will also be producing and performing in the company's next live Los Angeles reading in February 2022 as the marvelously comedic role of "Gwen" in Lady Face, written by her girlfriend and frequent collaborator Madi Goff. The statuesque 6-foot tall beauty was born into this business as the daughter of successful character actors Beth Grant ("The Mindy Project") and Michael Chieffo ("Battle of the Sexes"). She made her acting debut at three years old in the Sandra Bullock directed short film "Making Sandwiches" which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. In high school, Mary gave up her career as an all-star soccer goalie to focus on acting and modern dance, having studied Martha Graham technique since the age of 3. Valedictorian of her graduating class, she received the Performing Arts Dance Award and the Headmaster's Award - given to a senior whose loyalty, spirit and vitality have added to and will continue to benefit the school in years to come. In her junior year, she was inducted into the Cum Laude Society and presented with the Princeton Book Award (intellectual promise and academic excellence; exemplary service or extracurricular activities; outstanding personal character). Before Star Trek, Chieffo appeared opposite Academy Award-winner Octavia Spencer and Frances Fisher in "The Perfect Fit" directed by her mom Beth Grant and winner of the Audience Award at the SoHo International Film Festival and Best Ensemble Award at Women's Independent Film Festival. Mary is a classically trained singer with a five-octave range, training under the guidance of famed vocal coach Deborah Lapidus at Juilliard. She dreams of doing a female interpretation of Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar and playing Elphaba in the musical that converted her into a full-fledged theatre geek when she was in middle school -- Wicked. She lives in Los Angeles.
Mary Christina Brown

Mary Christina Brown

Mary Christina Brown is an emerging American actress with an eclectic performing arts background. Her years have culminated her into a genuine, experienced and versatile acting talent with a multi-ethnic background that epitomizes the recognition of American diversity. Her mother's blend of South Korean and Japanese ethnicities and her father's mixture of English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Native American Indian, and Dutch heritage, along with her stepmother's own Filipino, Chinese and Spanish influences, indeed creates Brown's dynamically alluring screen presence of worldly culture. Gracefully educated with foundational values of the ethnic spectrum, Mary Christina has proven herself to be a professional cultural chameleon. With transient beginnings common to being born into a military family, her nationally traveling tribe eventually settled in San Francisco. Raised in a talented warrior home, passion for the arts was inevitable from the age of seven, foreseeing a journey that would enact her vocation in acting, voice, music, dance, martial arts, and performing on stage throughout San Francisco, as well as booking commercials and modeling for print ad campaigns. Identity discovery in her early teen years revealed an inherent competitive drive, advancing her interest in a wide range of martial arts styles to date. She definitely didn't stop there either, eventually adding theater, classical vocal and instrumental training, as well as professional dance host to styles such as tap, jazz, modern, ballet, hip-hop, traditional Hawaiian and Tahitian. Mary Christina's late and post-teen years saw further evolution performing on stages around San Francisco and attended a raft of performing art schools (Young People's Musical Theater Company, A.C.T. Conservatory, School of the Arts High School, and Bennett Theatre Lab, to name a few). Her creative path became clearer to a full commitment, and visions of performing on Broadway were within a reachable distance. Ultimate, life had an alternative plan and the blessing of motherhood arrived sooner with the arrival of her beautiful daughter, Isabelle, and with it, a surge forward in dynamic professional action beyond previous-set goals. Mary Christina revisited her experience and education in Silicon Valley's growing Information Technology field. Albeit successful and professionally stable, her passion rested with performing and through the strength and support of her family, she relocated to Los Angeles to explore the entertainment opportunities. Knowing the struggle of family, auditions, sustainable employment, and maintaining marketable proficiency in her performance and martial arts training, she persisted. Seasoned from balancing between motherhood and corporate success, she reclaimed her performance stride cutting her teeth on BOTH sides of the camera. Her career progression has since landed her next to the likes of The Walking Dead headliner Norman Reedus, martial arts action star Michael Jai White, Bokeem Woodbine, John David Washington, Luke Goss, Russell Crowe, Steven Bauer, Paul Sloan, music and movie multi-hyphenate RZA, Corin Nemic, Udo Kier, Julian Sands, Peter Greene, the late film and television legend David Carradine, Jaime King, Taryn Manning, Jake Weber, and the Academy Award winning actor Richard Dreyfuss. Her film and TV roles invoke a wide range of depth and scope in her acting caliber with select credits such as that of undercover agent Monica in AWOL 72 (2015), Barrington's Henchwoman Swan in the HBO Film Vigilante Diaries (2016), Fasma, a Special Forces soldier in the SyFy television feature thriller, MindBlown (2016), as Kana, a Yakuza hitwoman whose centuries-old Samurai lineage has since destined her with a longstanding duty to protect the world from the evil power of the sought after Japanese doomsday stone in SyFy / Lionsgate Doomsday Device (2017) (a.k.a. Pandora's Box), a Speedboard riding burner named Kioko in Paydirt (2020), Jen, an Asian American living next door to a racist, a privileged and entitled white woman in Karen (2021), and as Kim, a small-town deputy sheriff in Every Last One of Them (2021). Collectively, along with characters such as that of a henchwoman, raver, courtesan, martial arts master, troubled mother, and burlesque dancer, that very depth and scope she has earned, in part, hails from playing roles normally meant for men (i.e., special-ops soldier, enigmatic minimalist vengeful swordswoman, international undercover special agent, lieutenant, deputy sheriff). As well as, working internationally on Star World Asia's longest-running reality competition television show, The Apartment on Netflix. On social media, she maintains a fan following via Instagram at @themarychristinabrown with posts that gravitate toward audiences, aiming to not only interact, but to motivate as well as inspire. More than the average face, set of legs, and perfunctory memes popular in today's societal currents, Mary Christina is as real as real gets and the quintessential sum of her life story. She's far from intangible and materialistic in her day-to-day life with a proven acumen for health and concerns for today's important issues, valuing insight in all things healthy for one's own growth on a spiritual and humanistic level. She's a mother, an animal lover, a daughter, a friend and confidant to a deserving few, and a progressive, motivational figure to many. Her craft is further amplified by all aforementioned, having attained an array of values and qualities that deem her vital to any director or showrunner in search of a diverse, professional, mature, and organic performer - all of which she provenly, and continually demonstrates time and again. Mary Christina Brown is living in Los Angeles --the city of makers, where she practices yoga, dance, voice, acoustic guitar, and martial arts. She enjoys horseback riding, hiking, and mountain biking (downhill, trail riding, & cross-country) in the great outdoors, and ESK8ing on new adventures.

Apk for TV

Apk for mobile