In just a few short years, Majandra (pronounced
Ma-han-dra) Delfino, born February 20, 1981 (Aquarius) has taken Hollywood by storm, with a starring role in
Roswell and roles in three movies. The daughter of a Venezuelan father and Cuban-American mother, Majandra was born in Caracas, Venezuela, but moved with her family to Miami at age 3. (She was born Maria Alejandra, but her sister Marieh could not pronounce it and her name became Majandra instead.) Growing up, she excelled in academics, but gravitated towards the arts, enrolling in ballet, singing and acting lessons, and was soon performing in school plays and community theater productions. At age 10, she danced in
The Nutcracker with the Miami Ballet. At age 11, Majandra joined an all-girls singing quartet named China Doll. The group, which included her best friend, Samantha Gibb, daughter of the Bee Gees' Maurice Gibb, specialized in Latin-styled pop. The group opened for the Bee Gees at a benefit concert at the Fountainbleu Hotel in Miami Beach. A few years later, Majandra and Samantha left the group but continued to write and record as a duo.
At age 15, her parents, dismayed with her acting aspirations, gave her a six-month deadline to pursue an acting role -- or fully concentrate on school. Within months, Majandra had secured an agent and won the role of Kathleen Quinlan's daughter in the film Zeus & Roxanne. The following summer, she landed her first television series, playing Tony Danza's eldest daughter on The Tony Danza Show. Before landing her role on Roswell, she also appeared on a short-lived show Katie Joplin. Adding to her big-screen credits, Majandra starred in the horror spoof, I Know What You Screamed Last Summer (aka Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th), as well as opposite Linda Hamilton in the coming-of-age drama The Secret Lives of Girls. She also appeared in the independent film The Learning Curve and had a role in the Academy-Award nominated motion picture, Traffic starring Michael Douglas and directed by Steven Soderbergh. She is at work on a new film Sticks and Stones.
Majandra lives in Los Angeles. Her mom, sister and her dogs - a standard poodle and a Pekinese - live there too. While continuing her acting, she has also returned to her first love of music and is currently in the recording studio writing and recording a CD of her music.