Marla Seidell is an award-winning actress whose work spans film, television, and stage. She brings Midwestern warmth, comedic bite, and an unexpectedly worldly perspective to grounded, heightened, and unpredictable characters.

She received Best Supporting Actress for playing Betsy, a former B-movie star clawing her back to the top, in Private Screening (Prime). The film showcases Marla’s knack for combining vulnerability, theatricality, and sharp comedy.

Marla has earned Best Actress nominations at the Laugh or Die Comedy Festival for two award-winning projects: It’s All in Your Head, in which she plays Monica, a woman plagued by inexplicable noises in her head, and Be Your Woman, in which she plays Dillon and Charlotte, the male and female personalities of the same person.

Her other credits reveal a wide-ranging character actor with a taste for the unexpected. In the award-winning crime drama, For Hannah (Prime), she plays Lori, a spacey reporter. In the streaming series Peaches & Daisies, she plays an eccentric gender studies professor, while Never Stop Talking casts her as a fierce feminist radio talk show host. In Cancel This Movie (Prime), she plays a delusional former movie star convinced she is living in the 1940s.

Marla received critical acclaim for playing multiple roles onstage in the period drama Bill W. And Dr. Bob, including the wife of an abusive husband, a long-suffering Southern wife of an alcoholic, and Henrietta Seiberling, known for her association with Alcoholics Anonymous.

Her dramatic work include Erin, a devoted wife watching her husband psychologically unravel in Derange, and Aylin, an embittered alcoholic mother of a nomadic daughter in Waxing. She also plays a naive Southern preacher’s wife in Binding.

Her comedic work includes Gina, a down-to-earth Southern baker who finally finds the courage to expose a deception in the faith-based comedy The Great Lakeview Bake-Off, and a working class diva wife in the family comedy Lightning Lotto.

Before becoming an actress, Marla built a career as a journalist covering food, arts, entertainment, and culture. She served as dining correspondent for the Daily Herald and as an entertainment stringer for the New York Post. She was also a Fulbright scholar in the Netherlands and earned an MA in European Studies from the University of Amsterdam—experiences that gave her a sharp eye for people, culture, and the details that make a character come alive.

Marla trained with Amy Lyndon, studied Shakespeare with Susan Hart, and trained in improv at The Annoyance. Her additional skills include singing, ballroom, swing, bachata, and salsa. Her dialects include Russian, Italian, Southern and New York.

Based in Chicago, Marla is available for local hire throughout the Midwest, Atlanta/Southeast and New York.