Anna Emily Altman
I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, with a turntable plugged into my bedroom wall and the Beatles spinning on repeat—my father’s doing. If you asked him, I’d been acting since I was two, but my first professional role came at seventeen as Rosalind in
“As You Like It.”
From the very beginning, everything about my life and training promised success. Music and performance came naturally; opportunities seemed within reach.
I trained at the Stella Adler Conservatory through NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts before completing my degree at Northwestern University. On paper, I had talent, training, and a future that seemed set.
But life unfolded differently. That early promise became a foil to years of struggle—fear I’d never truly fit in, doors that stayed closed, and a repeated sense of being outside the places I longed to belong.
I moved to Paris, searching for a home I hadn’t found in New York. Slowly, I discovered it. I fell in love with the city, its streets, its music, and my own bittersweet stories, whispered alongside the histories of the city. For the first time, I felt I could breathe, I could exist fully in a place that made sense.
Returning to New York, the walls returned. Acting again brought doors closed in my face, life pulled me off course—marriage, divorce, financial struggle. People told me I was talented, that I should keep going, yet I had no money, no home, and no clear path.
Then my father died.
His passing broke me open, and creation began. I wrote, composed music, and discovered stories I had carried silently for years. From that work, “Liner Notes” was born—a screenplay, a soundtrack, a world that finally felt like mine.
Back in New York City, I am producing this project, writing music, and building a life that feels like home. Every heartbreak, every closed door, every song of longing led me here. I follow the unexpected paths, trusting they carry the stories most worth telling.
CURRENT PROJECTS
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Co-Executive Producer/Writer, and cast as Ana Arditti
Production Manager
Portfolio/About
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Item description
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I've probably been truly wringing since I was a little girl when my teacher told my parents I had a propensity for it, so seeing my very first attempt at screenwriting with Liner Notes, so fervently come to life is deeply gratifying and validating.
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Some career highlights: Playing Rita in Educating Rita, being directed by Paula Plum at Gloucester Stage, Isabella in Measure for Measure, felt like a tremendous ride. A favorite staged reading was Cockney innkeeper for an Alan Knee play at the Workshop Theater in New York as well as reading the lead Katie, in Dirty by Andrew Hinderaker.
But of course, bringing the character of Ana to life in my own piece Liner Notes a wonderfully exciting and very cathartic ride.

