Tanna Frederick Movies and Career Information

Tanna Marie Frederick (born 1979) is a stage and independent film actress who rose to prominence for her title role in Henry Jaglom's Hollywood Dreams, for which she received the Best Actress Award at the 2008 Fargo Film Festival. Tanna Frederick was born in Mason City, Iowa where her father David Frederick was a pharmacist and her mother Nancy Frederick was a nursing instructor. She attended school in Mason City, and by fourth grade had begun to play in productions of that town's Stebens' Children's Theatre. As she would later put it, she had "been doing five shows a year for most of [her] life." Following her graduation from high school in 1995, Frederick attended college at the University of Iowa where she double majored in theater and political science. She was a regular on Iowa City stages appearing at the Riverside Theatre as "Jill" in Jack and Jill, and at the University Theatre in a one-woman play that she had written herself and titled Questioning Jabe. She would later recall that while at college she particularly enjoyed working with younger playwrights on new works, and that the programs of the university's Iowa Writer's Workshop were formative in giving her an open mind