Biography

Laurie Sanii is a Meisner-trained Iranian-American actor. Although she was born in the Chicago suburb of Libertyville, Illinois, her father's job as a petroleum engineer had the family relocating to Charleston, West Virgina and Lexington, Kentucky before finally landing in "Oil Capital of the World" Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she grew up surrounded by God-fearing Southern Baptists in the suburb of Broken Arrow.

She grew up in a bi-cultural household; her father was Persian, born in Kermanshah, Iran. Her mother was born in the Chicago suburbs and is of English, Irish, and French ancestry. The Iranian Revolution/American Embassy hostage crisis took place just as she was starting kindergarten. Her parents advised her to use the word "Persian" instead of "Iranian" if anyone asked about the origin of her last name, a common practice at that time of Iranian refugee families.

After graduating from Union High School, she was heavily encouraged to study a 'practical' subject for job security. She attended the University of Tulsa, where she received her B.S. in Chemistry.

She originally moved to Atlanta, Georgia to pursue her Ph.D. in Chemistry from Georgia Tech, which she received in 2005. After completing a Clinical Chemistry fellowship from Emory University School of Medicine, she spent just under 10 years as a research scientist in the chemical industry in California and Georgia before starting improv classes at Dad's Garage Theatre as a diversion from the unhappiness of being surrounded by humorless academics and scientists.

She loved studying improv so much that she began to more seriously study the craft of acting, starting with Meisner training at The Robert Mello Studio. She continues to study with multiple teachers and has appeared in several indie short and feature films, and two micro-mini series streaming on Amazon Prime.

In 2023, she was thrilled to understudy for both the lead and a supporting role in Atlanta's Alliance Theatre's production of the Pulitzer-winning prize play "English" by Sanaz Toossi.