Charmaine Cruz(I)
- Actress
- Director
- Producer
It's been an adventurous odyssey.
As a young child growing up in the beautiful southern deserts and northern mountains of Arizona, when she wasn't romping around in nature, doing her homework, swimming, dancing, or playing in sports, Charmaine was listening to music or watching movies and television. She aspired to act and create movies, theatre and television from a very early age.
As a child her family moved around a lot. At age eight for a short time her mother put her and her sister in a Catholic Boarding School in Nogales, Mexico. It was quite interesting since neither of them spoke the language. At age eleven she and her fourteen year old sister traveled across America on a Greyhound bus to spend an adventurous summer with her relatives on Long Island. Throughout these impressionable years she attended many different schools in many different cities, in three states and getting to know many different kinds of people. Varied experiences like these sparked Charmaine's interest in creating stories for movies, television, and theatre...but her filmmaking aspirations had to wait.
Just before graduating from high school in Tampa, Florida, she was was 1st Runner-Up in the Miss TEEN (Teens Encouraging Excellence Nationally) Tampa scholastic achievement pageant and at the same time was selected by Cosmopolitan Magazine to appear in their Beauty Issue. This launched the beginning of a modeling career, but Charmaine was not as interested in modeling as she was in acting. She had already set her sights on moving to Los Angeles to attend UCLA. However, instead of focusing on her studies at UCLA, she spent most of her time acting in student films. All she could think about was the industry.
She left school, started waiting tables and began taking acting classes with teachers Howard Fine, Jay Goldenberg, Deke Anderson, and Bill Traylor. She next moved to New York and studied with Herbert Berghoff and Geraldine Baron. She landed her first lead role as the Nuyorican street urchin, Rachel in The Bronx War, written and directed by the late Joseph B. Vasquez and did numerous plays around New York City. She got her Actors Equity card playing the native character Bala, the female lead in The Inuit written by Bill Bozzone and directed by prolific New York theatre director and writer Rob Barron at The Annenberg Center in Philadelphia. Then she got her SAG card.
Opportunities took her back to Los Angeles and she began studying with Cinda Jackson and Candace Silvers. She did numerous plays in lead roles as intriguing characters around Los Angeles with prolific Los Angeles playwrights and directors: Sharon Yablon, Wesley Walker, Guy Zimmerman, John Steppling, Michael Farkash, Susan Hayden, James Storm, and Cinda Jackson and began working in movies and television on shows like Melrose Place, Charmed, The Tower, American Tragedy as Connie Chung, credits listed here on IMDB.
While acting in the comedy short by director Brad Ableson, "Save Virgil" she was contacted to write and direct a short. Clueless as to how to start, she got some advice and help from Brad. That comedy short made it to some festivals, garnering some awards.
Following her aspirations as a filmmaker she went back to school at UCLA and graduated from the UCLA School of Theatre, Film, and Television, winning awards for her work, and was ready to go. But that's when the 2008 stock market crashed and everything shut down. She next received the gift of a child and spent some many years lovingly raising him, and being inspired to make the documentary in the making, "What's Up With Down".
After a long time gathering more stories, Charmaine is returning to the industry with exuberance, carrying along a wealth of even deeper life experiences to add to the ones that have been waiting to be told. She is grateful to be working in the industry she loves, ready to create some fantastic work.
As a young child growing up in the beautiful southern deserts and northern mountains of Arizona, when she wasn't romping around in nature, doing her homework, swimming, dancing, or playing in sports, Charmaine was listening to music or watching movies and television. She aspired to act and create movies, theatre and television from a very early age.
As a child her family moved around a lot. At age eight for a short time her mother put her and her sister in a Catholic Boarding School in Nogales, Mexico. It was quite interesting since neither of them spoke the language. At age eleven she and her fourteen year old sister traveled across America on a Greyhound bus to spend an adventurous summer with her relatives on Long Island. Throughout these impressionable years she attended many different schools in many different cities, in three states and getting to know many different kinds of people. Varied experiences like these sparked Charmaine's interest in creating stories for movies, television, and theatre...but her filmmaking aspirations had to wait.
Just before graduating from high school in Tampa, Florida, she was was 1st Runner-Up in the Miss TEEN (Teens Encouraging Excellence Nationally) Tampa scholastic achievement pageant and at the same time was selected by Cosmopolitan Magazine to appear in their Beauty Issue. This launched the beginning of a modeling career, but Charmaine was not as interested in modeling as she was in acting. She had already set her sights on moving to Los Angeles to attend UCLA. However, instead of focusing on her studies at UCLA, she spent most of her time acting in student films. All she could think about was the industry.
She left school, started waiting tables and began taking acting classes with teachers Howard Fine, Jay Goldenberg, Deke Anderson, and Bill Traylor. She next moved to New York and studied with Herbert Berghoff and Geraldine Baron. She landed her first lead role as the Nuyorican street urchin, Rachel in The Bronx War, written and directed by the late Joseph B. Vasquez and did numerous plays around New York City. She got her Actors Equity card playing the native character Bala, the female lead in The Inuit written by Bill Bozzone and directed by prolific New York theatre director and writer Rob Barron at The Annenberg Center in Philadelphia. Then she got her SAG card.
Opportunities took her back to Los Angeles and she began studying with Cinda Jackson and Candace Silvers. She did numerous plays in lead roles as intriguing characters around Los Angeles with prolific Los Angeles playwrights and directors: Sharon Yablon, Wesley Walker, Guy Zimmerman, John Steppling, Michael Farkash, Susan Hayden, James Storm, and Cinda Jackson and began working in movies and television on shows like Melrose Place, Charmed, The Tower, American Tragedy as Connie Chung, credits listed here on IMDB.
While acting in the comedy short by director Brad Ableson, "Save Virgil" she was contacted to write and direct a short. Clueless as to how to start, she got some advice and help from Brad. That comedy short made it to some festivals, garnering some awards.
Following her aspirations as a filmmaker she went back to school at UCLA and graduated from the UCLA School of Theatre, Film, and Television, winning awards for her work, and was ready to go. But that's when the 2008 stock market crashed and everything shut down. She next received the gift of a child and spent some many years lovingly raising him, and being inspired to make the documentary in the making, "What's Up With Down".
After a long time gathering more stories, Charmaine is returning to the industry with exuberance, carrying along a wealth of even deeper life experiences to add to the ones that have been waiting to be told. She is grateful to be working in the industry she loves, ready to create some fantastic work.
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