Daphne O'Neal

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Daphne began her performing arts training with classical piano and theory at the age of 5. At 16, she participated in the Young Artists' Competition. Daphne started ballet at age 9, appearing in annual Nutcrackers, among other ballets, through high school.A panel appearance on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" (1986) marked the start of her on-camera career. Her love of opera and ballet, along with her Harvard degree, suited her to the tongue-in-cheek portrayal of a "snob."By the end of the show, Daphne had won over the skeptical Chicago audience. Buoyed by the experience, she began auditioning for plays. First cast as the Postulant in The Sound of Music at Boston's Wheelock Family Theatre, Daphne went on to portray lead character Silvia in The Two Gentlemen of Verona by William Shakespeare.A few more successful stage efforts gave her the confidence to make the move to San Francisco where she booked her first commercial audition. In her initial indie pic, she played the overindulged, French-speaking daughter of acting idol Roscoe Lee Browne. After a hiatus, Daphne returned to acting in the crowd-pleasing romance Robin's Hood (2003) and the animated, multiple-award-winning Ravishing Raspberry (2003) by writer-producers Shawnelle and Shawnee Gibbs. That same year, she sang Lead Alto in a chorus of 12 in Scott Joplin's opera Treemonisha at San Francisco's venerated Stern Grove Festival.In 2009, Daphne was the only San Francisco actor hired for Ranch Studios' Corruption.Gov (2010), headlined by Lee Majors, Michael Madsen and Joe Estevez.Next, Daphne played the terrified victim of a gun-toting terrorist in the big-budget Japanese TV movie Gaikôkan Kuroda Kôsaku (2011), starring longtime screen sensation Yuji Oda. The year 2011 saw the release of the short Treasure (2011). Falling (2011), an impressionistic coming-of-age tale by writer-director Mikel Leyva, debuted in late 2013. Daphne achieved the long-held dream of playing a judge on film in the climactic final scene of the PBS short Futurestates: Refuge (2013). Refuge premiered to a sold-out house at Tribeca Film Festival in 2013 and now lives at futurestates.tv as a Season 4 feature.Daphne embodies ubiquitous artificial intelligence in the sci-fi indie feature I's (2013), slated for 2015 release. She portrays a college chum of the lead couple in the mystery short The Life of George Powers. Her first Canadian television project debuted in late 2014.In 2016, Daphne was thrilled to make a series of Spanish-language commercials for non-profit Protect Your Central Coast; overjoyed to play a TV reporter in the upcoming indie ballet feature Hope Dances (2017); and honored to take part in the ABC-TV miniseries When We Rise (2017). In Oct 2016, she made her first -- albeit brief -- appearance on TMZ Live (2011) as a dancer in what the show termed the Best Campaign Video of All Time.Daphne voices documentary, educational, animated and radio/TV projects and appears regularly in commercials and industrials. She has hosted live and taped PBS-TV fundraisers, among other programs. Show less «