Biografia
Beata Pozniak received the prestigious Voice Arts Award for "Outstanding Video Game Character - Best Performance" for her portrayal of Skarlet, the Blood Queen, in "Mortal Kombat 11." She is a five-time Voice Arts Award nominee. The Washington Post recognized her for the "Best Audiobook of the Year." She has won two Earphones Awards for audiobook narration: "Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead" by Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk and "The Light in Hidden Places" by #1 New York Times bestselling author Sharon Cameron. Pozniak also narrated documentaries including "The Officer's Wife," about the mass murder of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest, and co-narrated "Freedom from Despair," a film about communism, which earned her the Croatian Heart Award alongside John Savage and Michael York and received an honorable mention from the US Congress. She co-produced "An Unknown Country," nominated for an EMMY Award for Best Documentary.
Raised in Poland during the Cold War, Beata moved to the United States before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Her American film debut was in Oliver Stone’s eight-time Oscar-nominated "JFK," playing Marina Oswald, wife of Gary Oldman’s character. The experimental film "All These Voices," in which she portrayed a Holocaust survivor, won a student Oscar. Her television roles are diverse, including Irene, a revolutionary in George Lucas’s "Young Indiana Jones Chronicles," Dr. Fielding on "Melrose Place," Masha on "Mad About You," and the female President of the World on "Babylon 5."
She founded Theater Discordia, featured at the Los Angeles Theater Festival, which evolved with Peter Sellars’s involvement into a renowned venue for experimental theater. Her company expanded into Discordia Global Media, where Pozniak directs films inspired by real events or poetry. She is recognized as a significant voice in video art and filmpoem genres, highlighted in the encyclopedic book "The Poetics of Poetry Film" published by Intellect Books. Named Poet of the Month by Seventh Quarry Press, her poetry has been translated into Armenian, Polish, and Korean. Her latest anthology from Africa is titled "I Can't Breathe: A Poetic Anthology of Social Justice."
Beata frequently serves on judging panels for the Television Academy’s Primetime Emmy Awards and has been a Celebrity Presenter for the Independent Feature Project West’s Independent Spirit Awards and The Firebird Awards. She also posthumously presented an award to Audrey Hepburn at the Human Rights Film Festival, supported by the United Nations. A committed human rights activist, Pozniak introduced the first bill in U.S. Congress history to officially recognize International Women’s Day (H.J.R. 316), earning honors from the Mayor of Los Angeles and the US Congress. She received the Maria Konopnicka International Prize for "Outstanding Achievements in the Arts and Championing Women’s Rights Worldwide." In Poland’s Walk of Fame, akin to Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, she was honored with a bronze hand.
Appointed by the President of SAG-AFTRA to the Women's Committee, Pozniak often serves as a juror, including for the Emmy Awards at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. She holds an MFA in Film and Drama Arts and has taught at USC’s Master’s program and UCLA.
