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Emalie Noelani was born in Honolulu, Hawaii and raised by a single mom in Apopka, Florida, a suburb of Orlando. She enjoyed performing as early as two years old, finding any opportunity to entertain a crowd. Emalie's mother often recounts stories of her using her aunt's doorstep as a stage, singing the songs she learned in preschool and dancing for her family.
She never planned to pursue acting on a professional level, however. From a young age, Emalie enjoyed debating and was determined to become a lawyer. So, as a precocious sixth grader, she set out to find public speaking classes, but quickly discovered that they don't typically offer Toastmasters for eleven-year-olds. Determined not to waste time, she sought out another avenue for speaking in front of an audience: acting classes. After months of persuasion (and perhaps signing up for an audition behind her mother's back...) a local acting school called to offer Emalie the opportunity to audition for their on-camera class. She fell in love immediately. An avid procrastinator, she always enjoyed cold reading workshops because she could wait until the last minute to memorize her script.
In eighth grade, Emalie traveled to Los Angeles for a talent scouting convention, where she auditioned for dozens of agencies and casting directors. She received callbacks from Disney Channel producers and agencies who represented Demi Lovato and Leighton Meester. Unable to relocate to California, Emalie only pursued leads in Florida.
Emalie began high school one year later, where she had the opportunity to be among the first students to ever grace the Wekiva High School stage. Wekiva opened for the first time in 2007, Emalie's 9th grade year, and she starred in its first school play ever! Portraying Babe in Beth Henley's "Crimes of the Heart," Emalie was not only a leading lady, but also the only freshman in her cast! Throughout her high school theatre career, Emalie also had roles in "Juvie," "Talk Radio," "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," and Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream."
Emalie initially believed she would give up acting after she graduated. As a pre-med biology major, Emalie intended to become a medical examiner. Although she aced all of her science courses, she quickly realized that a life in a morgue or lab was not for her. She switched majors five times by the time she finished (anthropology, archaeology, international business, a self-designed major, and finally communication studies with a concentration in public relations). In order to make up for her indecisiveness, she had to take 22 credit hours per semester on top of doing internships in order to graduate on time. Around her junior year of college, she began thinking she would pursue a career as a talent agent and decided to give an internship at an agency a try. Interning at an agency during her senior year filled in any knowledge gaps she had about the industry.
Following graduation she planned to move to Los Angeles and work her way up the ladder, interning with another talent or casting agency. In a lucky twist of fate, she had the opportunity to travel to Italy with family instead, which meant postponing her career a few months. After returning from vacation she had time to kill and decided to start doing background ("extra") work in hopes of getting on set and networking. During this summer, Emalie also decided to audition for a feature film on a whim. It was her first audition in years and she booked it! It wasn't set to begin filming for several months, so she decided to take acting classes and audition for student films as practice. The feature film eventually fell through, but Emalie had already established herself by that time. She had found an agent in Orlando and was consistently being booked.
Several months later, Emalie decided that this was the life she wanted. Following a lot of student films, a few commercials, a bit of self-motivation, and one major quarter-life crisis, Emalie decided to pursue acting full time. It's hard to believe that this all occurred as recently as 2016, but she has been extremely fortunate to make this her career. In addition to working in front of the camera, Emalie has also been casting ("Reboot" [2016]) and producing ("Holiday Birds" [2017]). She now lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
