Biography

Marianne's acting, directing and teaching career has taken her to many places in the USA and overseas. She received a BA from UCLA's Theatre Department and an MFA from Southern Methodist University. Her stage roles include Evelyn Briggs in Independence and Martha Livingston in Agnes of God. She has been seen on All My Children, Guiding Light, and Love,Sydney as well as other sit coms and day time television. In 2006, she was awarded a Red Carpet Award from Los Angeles Women in Theatre (Click HERE to read more).

Marianne loves participating in the development of new plays and playwrights. She created a workshop series for playwrights at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. The Marianne Murphy Women & Philanthropy Play Reading Series offers student playwrights an opportunity to see and hear their work performed.

Marianne has taught theatre and communications at such institutions as Cornell, Rutgers and Montclair State Universities. Most adventurously she taught at Forman Christian College in Lahore, Pakistan, where she directed The Unforgiven an original play by Adeel Salmon and classics including The Importance of Being Ernest, The Zoo Story, The Bald Soprano and the The Lesson. She continues to do theatre workshops annually.

She is a long time member of Polaris North, a NYC self-producing theatre group and is a member of Creative Actors Alliance, an LA-based group engaged in producing original films. Other memberships include Women in Film and Vasta.

A personal note about my early years:

"I was born in Northern California. My father was a foreman in charge of building the tracks for Union Pacific Railroad. My earliest memories are happy ones of living in a box car that moved from place to place through the redwoods as he completed each section of track. He died when I was three, so my mother, sister and I went to live on a farm with my grandparents in the San Joaquin Valley. I used to collect the eggs from our free range chickens for my grandmother. We had a lot of fun on the farm.

I played my first lead role when I was 9, the witch in the Halloween play. Later we moved to Southern California, just a few miles from Disneyland. Yes I've worked for Disney, but not the studio. I was lucky enough to be a tour guide at the park when I was in college. I still have the letter on White House stationary from Henry Kissinger thanking me for the tour I gave him and his children. It was a really great summer job."

Vew my project updates on the Latest News page!