Bianca Amato

Amato was a member of the original cast of the long running South African soap opera Isidingo, portraying Philippa De Villiers from 1998 to 2001. The role, a "feisty young Englishwoman who was romantically involved with a black mine manager", has been called "groundbreaking and big news in post apartheid South African television",[1] and the storyline cited as "the first interracial romance depicted on South African television."[2] Of the experience Amato said, "It was wonderful to be part of the slow but healthy process that shifted people's attitudes."[2] Her performance in Isidingo earned Amato an Avante for Best Actress in a Television Series.[1]

In 2002, Amato was granted a United States Permanent Resident Card as an "Alien of Extraordinary Ability" in the arts and emigrated to the United States.[2] After appearing in a 2002 episode of the HBO series Sex and the City, she played several leading roles with the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota between 2003 and 2005.[1][2] Since 2009 Amato has guest starred in several U.S. TV series.[3][4] Amato portrays Delia Alexander in the 2015 PlayStation Network series Powers.

Amato appeared in the original Broadway production of Tom Stoppard's Tony Award-winning trio of plays The Coast of Utopia (2006–07),[1][5] as well as the 2013–14 Broadway revival of Shakespeare's Macbeth.[6][7] She also understudied the roles of Hannah Jarvis and Lady Croom in the 2011 Broadway revival of Stoppard's Arcadia.[8] Off-Broadway, Amato has appeared in Bill Irwin's Mr. Fox: A Rumination (2004),[9][10] and as Emma in Trumpery (2007).[11][12] She later costarred as Calantha in The Broken Heart in 2012,[13][14][15] and played the leading role of Olga Knipper in Neva in 2013.[16][17] Amato also starred as Amanda in a production of Noël Coward's Private Lives directed by Maria Aitken, first presented in 2012 at the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston,[18][19] and again in 2014 at the Shakespeare Theatre Company's Lansburgh Theatre in Washington, D. C.[20][21][22][23] In 2014 she also portrayed Regan in the Theatre for a New Audience production of King Lear in New York.[24][25][26][27][28][29]

Amato has narrated over 40 audiobooks,[3] including most of the historical novels in the Cousins' War series written by Philippa Gregory, and Charles Stross' 2008 science fiction novel Saturn's Children.[13][30] She also voiced the 2006 gothic novel The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield,[31] which had risen to No. 1 on The New York Times Best Seller list in its second week of publication.[2][32][33]

Amato was born in Cape Town, South Africa.[2] The daughter of "politically active parents", she "grew up keenly aware of the 'deep, deep troubles' of apartheid", and as a teen was a member of a left-wing organization called Pupils Awareness and Action Group.[2] Amato graduated from the University of Cape Town.[1][3]

• Bianca Amato at IMDb
• Bianca Amato at the Internet Broadway Database
• Bianca Amato at the Internet Off-Broadway Database