Biography
Actress Melanie Haynes has built a strong reputation through exceptional performances across film, television, commercials, voice-over work, and more.
Hailing from a small town in Kansas, Haynes studied dance, piano, and drama during her youth. After her family relocated to Texas, she attended Lamar University, where she won Best Actress as a sophomore, and later earned a degree and teaching certificate in Theater and English from the University of Houston. Following college, she danced for several years with Patsy Swayze's Houston Jazz Ballet Company before her passion for acting led her down a new path.
Haynes' film and television work spans major studio and network projects as well as notable independent films. She has shared the screen with several Academy Award winners, including Dianne Wiest in The Face of Rage and, more recently, Mahershala Ali in HBO’s True Detective. Additionally, she lent her voice to Sony’s Oscar-winning Best Animated Feature, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, alongside numerous A-list stars.
Throughout her career, Haynes has been recognized for portraying a diverse array of characters. Highlights include a sinister doula in Terror Films’ eerie Blood Born, a quirky aunt in the comedy Antiquities, a tough Texas bar owner wielding a baseball bat in The Last Mark, and a nurturing mother in Lifetime’s The Road Home for Christmas.
While raising her family, Haynes flourished as a voice-over artist and founded her own studio in 2002, which remains successful today. She has proudly served 15 years on the board of SAG-AFTRA’s Houston Local Branch, including two terms as President. Now dividing her time between Los Angeles and Houston, Haynes, a grandmother, continues to embody the spirit of being "refined, not tamed.
