Marja-Lewis Ryan

Marja-Lewis Ryan

Marja-Lewis Ryan is an American writer, director, producer, and actress. She was born in Brooklyn, New York, on 19 March 1985. She received an honors BFA from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts where she studied at The Atlantic Theatre Company's Acting School. She is best known for writing and co-starring in the LGBT drama film, The Four-Faced Liar, which won multiple awards, including Outstanding First Narrative Feature at L.A. Outfest. She also co-produced that film. In the early 2000s, she was a member of a theater company in Los Angeles, Theater of NOTE, where she received positive critical reviews as a writer and director. She earned the Maverick Award from the Los Angeles Women's Theatre Festival in 2016.In an interview, she described her interest in writing as stemming from her time at NYU. She and her friends figured that "you have to make your own work." And so she wrote her first script for them to workshop as actors. As for her thematic interests, she recounts what happened after The Four-Faced Liar got released: "I had the opportunity to go into meetings with crazy big people. The one question that came up repeatedly was 'what kind of work do you want to do for the rest of your life?' The first time someone asked me that, I answered it so truthfully that I shocked myself. I said, 'I just want to write dark comedies for women that don't ostracize a male audience.'"Ryan wrote and directed the film 6 Balloons, released in March 2018, and is drafting the reboot of Splash starring Channing Tatum and Jillian Bell. She has been tapped to spearhead the sequel to The L Word, currently in development at Showtime, as executive producer and showrunner.

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