11 Questions with "Switched at Birth" Star Vanessa Marano!

In a little over a decade, Vanessa Marano has made quite the acting career for herself. This teen star has made appearances in 29 different shows, including starring in her two hit shows, “Gilmore Girls” and “The Young and the Restless”, all before her 19th birthday.

She started acting at the age of seven. Her mother owns Agoura Children’s Theatre where Vanessa would spend every weekend helping out and participating in the plays. She also starred in several national commercials starting from a young age. Due to her successful career, she is one of the youngest members of the prestigious Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Vanessa also has done work with animated films including her first, Finding Nemo, as well as Easy, The Clique, Stopping Power, Dear Lemon Lima, and, most recently, The Secret Lives Of Dorks.

And she also speaks Italian!

Vanessa stars in ABC Family’s new series “Switched at Birth”. From “Gilmore Girls” to “The Young and the Restless” to now, this teen actress shares her experiences working in television, growing up in theater and balancing school and work. Young Hollywood had the chance to do a little Q&A with the starlet -- check out her responses below!

 

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YH: What can you tell us about your "Switched at Birth" character Bay Kennish?

VM: Bay is a spirited, artistic, and difficult teenager who finds out she was switched at birth. Out of all the characters in the show, she is taking the switch the hardest, and is using rebellion as way to deal with the news.

 

YH: What about “Switched at Birth” are you most excited about?

VM: It's a teen show with substance, with a fantastic amount of strong female characters.

 

YH: How does working on “Switched at Birth” differ from other TV shows you have worked on?

VM: Well, there's a number of deaf people on set, and I have never worked in that type of atmosphere before. It's been incredible, because we're working in two languages. It adds another element to the job that I guarantee you won't find on most sets.

 

YH: What other projects do you have in the works?

VM: I'm waiting for the release of a comedy I did called The Secret Lives of Dorks, and of course the premiere of "Switched at Birth." Other than that, my biggest project is school. 


 

YH: You and your sister, Laura, played sisters on “Without a Trace”. What was that like?

VM: It was our first job together, and our first job. There's a lot of nostalgia attached to that show for me, because my sister and I were on it on and off for it's entirety. It was our actors' adolescence.

 

YH: Your birthday is on Halloween. Does that make your birthday better or annoying because everyone will be in costume? Do you have candy or cake on your birthday?

VM: It's kind of the best birthday ever, specifically when you're a kid. When I was younger, and I could pull this off until about age ten, I would go trick-or-treating and tell people it was my birthday. I would get so much extra candy, and my cousin would get so mad. When we'd come back to my grandparents' house, he'd have this little pile while I had a mountain. I fear I solely ruined trick-or-treating for him.

 

YH: How do you balance work as actress with school being a sophomore in college?

VM: It's been very hard. When I'm working, I just do a class a semester. Thank goodness for community college so you can actually do that sort of thing. My goal is to just get my degree before I'm 30; I got 12 years to go.

 

YH: How do you feel you have grown as an actress from “Gilmore Girls”? “The Young and the Restless”?

VM: Actually, both of those experiences helped me grow in similar ways. Both of those shows included massive amounts of dialogue and complicated staging. With "Gilmore" you had to talk a mile a minute, and with "Y&R" you had no rehearsal time. So, it was kind of like a crash course in theatre training, thankful I had done theatre before; otherwise, I would have been lost.

 

YH: You started acting in plays at seven years old. What are some of your favorite memories at the Agoura Children's Theatre?

VM: Well, my mom owns Agoura Children's Theatre, and grew up there. Every weekend I was there, helping with plays or participating in plays. Some kids went to parks, I went to my mom's theatre. It's basically what made me want to do this professionally. One of my favorite memories is that we had a theatre rooster for a little while. Some theatres have theatre cats; we had a theatre rooster. My family had just come back from vacation. We had been staying with relatives, and everyday we were being awoken early by the neighbor's rooster. You can imagine that this was not the happiest vacation. Anyway, we get back from the vacation, go to the theatre, and, sure enough, are greeted by a “cock-o-doodle-doo”. We named him Vendetta.

 

YH: What advice would you give to other young actors out there?

VM: Do theatre. Cannot stress how important it is to do a play, even if it's just school play.

 

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“Switched at Birth” premieres tonight, June 6, on ABC Family at 9pm. Watch how rebellious Bay deals with the situation after she learns that she is switched at birth!

 

- Evelina Weary, YH Staff