Tanna Frederick

Tanna Marie Frederick
Picture by Lesley Bohm.
Born	1979 Mason City, Iowa
Occupation	Screen and stage actress
Known for	Independent film roles
Parent(s)	David and Nancy Frederick

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 Mason City 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 towards "strange, independent and unusual projects."

Frederick graduated in 1999 as valedictorian of her University of Iowa liberal arts class, and shortly thereafter moved to Los Angeles to follow what the actress has termed her "Joan of Arc calling" which happened at the age of 7.

For the next several months Frederick received irregular assignments as an extra on Days of Our Lives, and as an actress in several stage productions including N. Richard Nash's Echoes and Ben Guillory and Danny Glover's production of Toussaint: For the Love of Freedom. Between assignments, she did whatever was necessary to "pay the bills," including work as a waitress.

At one of the rehearsals for Toussaint, a fellow actor mentioned that he had just played a part in a Henry Jaglom film. At the time Frederick had not heard of Jaglom, but following the colleague's suggestion that "supposedly, if you write him a letter and tell him that you love his films, he'll cast you in a movie," Frederick wrote to Jaglom. In a three-page letter she extolled the virtues of Jaglom's film Déjà Vu—even though she had not actually seen it at the time. To her surprise, Jaglom called her back and invited her to a screening, and soon thereafter gave her a job at his office.

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