Life and Career
Ortiz was born in Manhattan and is the daughter of Angel L. Ortiz, a former Philadelphia City Council member of Puerto Rican descent, and an Irish American mother.
As a child, Ortiz originally dreamed of becoming a ballerina, and she studied ballet for eight years, until the pain of dancing en pointe forced her to pursue a different artistic discipline.
Switching to singing, Ortiz attended the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in New York City and later the University of the Arts in Philadelphia before making her professional stage debut in a regional theater production of Dangerous Liaisons. Her additional stage credits include portraying Chrissy in a European touring production of Hair, regional theater productions such as Dog Lady and the Cuban Swimmer and in the South Coast Repertory Theater's production of References to Salvador Dalí Make Me Hot.
After joining LAByrinth Theatre Company, she appeared off-Broadway in In Arabia, We'd All Be Kings, which also co-starred Puerto Rican actress Liza Colón-Zayas and was directed by Academy Award-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman and named one of the 10-best plays of 1999 by the magazine Time Out New York.
Read more about this topic: Ana Ortiz
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