Alexandra Smothers

Alexandra Smothers was born at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto. Her father was a third generation Cardinal at Stanford. She jokes that she must have been a "smart baby" to be born at such a prestigious school. Her Dad became a well-respected attorney and her mom was a waitress at their family restaurant for 50 years known as the "Rainbow Hut" on the Central Coast. She moved a lot as a child, between her biker mom and protective sister, her intellectual giant of a Dad, and ultimately the two who had a great impact on her life, her grandparents. She is grateful to them for raising her, with the help of her great aunt and uncle from Palo Alto for taking her from foster care and providing her with a boarding school education. Alexandra experienced living at every economic level and had a myriad of life experiences that give her a rich well to draw from as an actress. Academy Award Nominated Actress Carrie Snodgress befriended Smothers in line for a ride at Magic Mountain and mentored her in her journey to becoming a working actress and a mom. She stressed the value of volunteering one's time to worthy causes. Smothers studied with Mr. Cochran, former Yale professor who taught Meryl Streep and Danny Glover. Smothers credits Oliver Stone for inspiring her to come to Los Angeles to work as an actress in films after meeting him at the Fiesta Five Movie Theater in Santa Barbara, where Alexandra gave him a tiny little slide that a photographer nearby just happened to have on him. She had just finished her first film, "The Legend of Shokar" that premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in 1992. He encouraged her to come to LA. She moved from Santa Barbara where she was attending school and living on a boat to Los Angeles. Her Dad came into her life again after a ten-year absence. He was a resident at the Betty Ford Center. His roommate was unit publicist, Thomas Gray, who took Alexandra under his wing and taught her what he new about the business of show. By 1996, she was getting hundreds of auditions and a few small roles that ended up mostly on the cutting room floor. Her film and TV credits include Will Smith's breakthrough series "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" which she was fired from for trying a different accent each take, "I was green!" she laughs, red-faced. Her first agent was Joel Tappis. They met while she sat alone waiting for a man for whom she had decided to buy some teeth so that he could look for a job. (He didn't have any in the front) Smothers agreed to travel to see about a picture and was brought in on Tim Burton's "Mars Attacks!" (in which the film pioneer cast her as a Cleopatra cocktail waitress) by Marilee Lear. She had her own trailer and was on set for a week with Tim Burton, Danny DeVito and Annette Bening. Smothers couldn't help but be inspired by them, and the cinematographer Peter Suschitzky taught her about creating meaningful moments on film. She flew from the set in Vegas to see her Dad marry his wife Heidi at the Little Chapel in Yosemite Valley. Two months later, Alexandra's son, Isaac, was conceived to her free-spirited globetrotting new boyfriend. She moved back to the Central Coast to raise her newborn son, Isaac, and to help her sister, Tasha who was sick. She changed her name from Brandy to Alexandra. In contemplating the naming of her son, she realized the importance of a name and its meaning. " 'Brandy' means 'conqueror.' 'Alexandra' means 'helper of mankind'. Smothers wanted to devote her time to her son. Two years later, while on a good-will ambassador trip to aid an orphanage in Mexico, a producer took notice of her. Three months later, Smothers, living in a small country town of 282 people, received a phone call. She was hired to fly to Belize as an on-screen narrator to make the case for the conservation of the rainforests, providing clean drinking water to the world and building safe homes for "Target Earth" and "Eden Conservancy". When she got back, she met the disciplined and compelling director Patti Kane, who created a theatre in Paso Robles that debuted with Smothers' performance as Cherie in 'Bus Stop' in the year 2000, Classic American Theatre was born. For the next five years Smothers worked closely with artist-in-residence Jeffrey Schultz and Director Patti Kane bringing powerful leading ladies to life to packed houses and standing ovations. She played Maggie in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" which was produced by Rob Stevens who was known to the Los Angeles theatre community for producing the awards show "The Robbies." Alexandra missed out on knowing her father as a child. She and her son spent every Christmas with him and his wife Heidi in Ahwahnee, just outside of Yosemite. While Smothers and her dad didn't enjoy the close-knit relationship she longed for, her dad told her that he was her biggest fan after seeing Smothers in "Bus Stop" as Cherie, a role brought to the screen by the late Marilyn Monroe. The desire to share her work with a larger audience led her back to Los Angeles. Her first appearance on stage in Los Angeles was as Blanche DuBois in "Streetcar Named Desire," and at the Improv Comedy Lab as Mrs. Brown in "National Velvet. " Again, with the audience limited to those who could make it to the theatre, Smothers set out in search of a wider audience. In 2007, Alexandra represented Lucky Jeans and Liz Claiborne as a model in Sri Lanka, and had a very emotional journey down the coast hosted by Hidiramani Corporation, the clothing manufacturer. They took her to the village built for the survivors who had lost family members in the tsunami following the magnitude 9.1 earthquake in 2004. When she got there, they held a town hall meeting to tell her of their desire for peacekeeping, language education, and technology. Smothers would still like to establish aide to the region. After hearing Producer Ralph Winter speak about the importance of making movies and not just dreaming about it, Smothers engaged the help of a very talented cinematographer Paolo Cascio to create a short film about her sister's recent death at 37 in a head- on collision. The story was originally titled "Illa Ensis" but at the last second was changed to "Broken" It was a very personal journey that premiered at the Alex Theatre on April 4, 2009. WGA writer Jeff Wilber wrote the non-linear script. In 2010, on their third collaboration with Smothers, Directors Roberto Fernando Canuto and Xiaoxi Xu wrote a feature script with Alexandra in mind to play one of the leads in an ensemble piece, and asked Alexandra to join them. The first day of filming for her first feature film, Smothers learned her father was dying of Pancreatic cancer. "Desire Street" with Alejandra Walker, Ellen Clifford, Javier Lopez and Alexandra Smothers, first screened a rough cut on November 13, 2009 In Theatre 3 on the Universal Studios lot. Her father passed away on May 4, 2010 and she doesn't know if he ever saw that film. She hastily married someone she hadn't dated five days later in her grief. In the summer of 2010 Alexandra Smothers played Margie the waitress in "Silent Crossroads" set in the 60's in rural Echo, Utah and directed by her husband. She won the "Best Performance in an Acting Role" award from 'Action on Film' Film Festival WithOutaBox Award in 2012, and was nominated for Best Actress from the Movieville Film Festival in Sarasota Florida. They created another short film shortly thereafter where she plays a spy. Their relationship ended upon its completion and separation was a rocky one. Smothers delved into volunteering to keep her life in perspective. She worked worked briefly on the mob comedy feature "Pizza With Bullets" starring Talia Shire, Vincent Pastore, Ronnie Marmo, Tony Amendola, Tony Devon and directed by Robert Rothbard.