Marianna Palka

About Marianna Palka

Multi award-winning multi hyphen Palka was born and brought up in Glasgow and moved to New York City at age 17 to study at the Atlantic Theater Company. She studied Suzuki movement for actors, knows how to do any accent, has theater voice projection and is known for being the kindest most enthusiastic director. She wrote, directed and starred in amazingly reviewed Good Dick which played in Dramatic Competition at Sundance Film Festival 2008. The film stars Palka and Jason Ritter (with whom she met in 1999), Martin Starr, Mark Webber, Charles Durning and Tom Arnold. Palka received the Directing Award from Sean Connery for the film. The film explores what intimacy truly can be for someone who has been sexually abused in their childhood. Critics have related it to Hitchcock's Marnie for its vulnerable and strong, masculine and feminine male and female characters. It's been described as the only film with only one female character; that still passes the Bechdel Test. Good Dick played internationally in cinemas across the globe. And has never not been top 5 streaming on Hulu. It was self-released in the US in 2009, in the states, and the New York Times wrote about its success, creating the phrase "The Good Dick business model" At the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, Palka was a Juror with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Later that year she performed in "Love Loss and What I Wore" at The Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles.Palka appeared in Peter Mullan's 2011 film TriBeCa Neds. which Robert DeNiro bought and released in America. In this film Palka played a red-headed Scottish character BETH. Neds was shot on film and is the most critically acclaimed film Palka had done since Good Dick at that time. Palka played the lead role of Texas southern feminist bad-ass JEVA in director Jeremiah Jones independent film Restive. She appeared again at Sundance in 2012 in the short Spoonful (by director Jenee LaMarque about breastfeeding) and in Bryce Dallas Howard's second film When You Find Me. She played a Scottish bookstore owner in director Nathan Sutton's film Autumn Wanderer. She starred in director Sylvia Sether's shot on film short film, King Of Norway.In 2012, she was in The Ensemble Theater in Santa Barbara, California, reading of The Good Soldier. She appeared in as Irish Girleen Martin McDonagh's The Lonesome West at the Actor's Gang Theatre, Los Angeles, and in as another Irish woman in Conor McPherson's Dublin Carol at the Ensemble Theatre Company. Gaining positive reviews and awards for all. In 2014 Marianna produced and was the subject of HBO Lucy Walker documentary Lions Mouth Opens which was nominated for an Emmy and short-listed for an Oscar. In 2015 Palka played 'Minerva', Jemima Kirke's character Jessa's sister in GIRLS HBO in true magical fashion the show's Jenni Konner met Palka at Jeremy Konner's wedding by the pool. Palka was wearing a blue macrame bathing suit. Jenni Konner told Lena Dunham that if they ever need a sister for Jessa on the show, Palka was it. This the exact same bathing suit Palka wore on the show. Along with her Scottish kilt which her Polish grandmother Babcia bought for her from Marks and Spencer's when Palka was 14.Palka wrote her Sundance 2017 critically acclaimed feature film BITCH over a weekend in Lake Tahoe because she was inspired by Maya Angelou's habit of writing in hotels. The film was produced by Elijah Wood, Daniel Noah and Josh Waller's who's company Spector Vision developed the film and sold for America r...

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