Anna Akana is a bisexual American actress, comedian, filmmaker, musician, author, and YouTuber. She also owns a clothing line called Ghost & Stars.
On February 14, 2007, Akana's younger sister, Kristina, died by suicide aged 13. Several months after, Akana watched Margaret Cho perform on a Comedy Central special and laughed for the first time since her sister's death. She began to see laughter as a means of trying to move on with her life and decided to seriously pursue comedy (which she started at age 19). Akana has been vocal about her sister's suicide and is a strong advocate for suicide prevention. In 2013, Akana uploaded a YouTube video, "Please don't kill yourself", in which she explains how it felt for her to have a family member die by suicide. In that same year, she released a book Surviving Suicide which contains her journal entries from the two years after her sister's death.
Through YouTube, Anna makes comedy videos, documentaries, and short films. She also formed a comedy music duo, Cat Benatar, with fellow comedian and writer Megan Rosati. In 2014, Akana was listed on New Media Rockstars Top 100 Channels, ranked at #72. One of her short films, Miss Earth, was partially financed by Brian Grazer and Ron Howard's production company, New Form Digital. It was part of the 2014 Incubator, a series to showcase and produce original stories by YouTube Creators and filmmakers. Miss Earth was later adapted into a web series, Miss 2059, and released on Verizon's go90 app in June 2016, with a second season released in late 2017. After that, Anna executive produced and starred in the lead role in the original comedy-drama web television series Youth & Consequences, created by Jason Ubaldi and released in 2018 on YouTube Red. And she is also the host of the web series Crash Course Business: Entrepreneurship beginning in August 2019.
On TV you might know her from her reoccurring roles in Stitchers or Corporate. She is also a voice actress in the Disney cartoon Big City Greens (Gloria Sato), the Disney cartoon Amphibia (Sasha Waybright), and the adult cartoon Magical Girl Friendship Squad (Daisy).
To name a few, Anna’s film roles include Daisy in Kids vs Monsters, Writer in Luis' story in Ant-Man, Sasha Li in Go Back To China, and Lydia in You Get Me.
You can also catch Anna doing comedy tours or on the podcast Explain Things to Me, which she hosts with fellow comedian Brad Gage. In this, the two interview experts in various fields about their work.
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