Malinda Farrington

Malinda Farrington was born Malinda Lee Shaffer in Dixon ,Illinois, but raised in Montgomery, Alabama, by her Mother, Jeanne Ellis, who was a college professor and a child star during the depression. Her Mother also sang with Paul Whitman's Big Band from 1937-1942 and played Jeannette MacDonald as a child in Girl of the Golden West. Malinda went to SMU in Dallas, Texas on Scholarship and left her junior year to move to New York City to pursue dance. In NYC she gained a full scholarship to Alvin Ailey's School of Dance while Alvin was still alive and was thrilled to learn from him and Judith Jamison. After a screen test with Sidney Poitier for Fast Forward she realized she might have more to experience than just dance. She became a Broadway gypsy and often understudied through out her Broadway career. She began with Dangerous Games in which she was blessed to work with Graciela Daniele, who put her in as the lead Lacivia in San Fransisco and then off to Broadway. She later worked with Bernadette Peters and Martin Short in The Goodbye Girl, with Michael Damian in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, with Victor Garber and Jerry Lewis in Damn Yankees and with the living icon Chita Rivera, in Chita Rivera, The Dancer's Life. Malinda then moved to LA to pursue a career in TV and film. Her very first short became an award winning film that won her best supporting actress at a festival. Since then she's done several national commercials and most recently was a supporting actress in the feature film, The Crossbreed and Co-Starred in the NBC pilot of Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist as the first to sing to Jane Levy.