Nia Vardalos

Anything I write or post on WhoSay is just a desperate need for attention from a middle-child Canadian pretending to be an actor/writer while living among impossibly beautiful people in annoyingly sunny Los Angeles.





Actor, writer. Born Antonia Eugenia Vardalos on September 24, 1962 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. An outgoing girl since childhood, Vardalos began her professional acting career at the Rainbow Stage, a local theater company that helped her land a scholarship to Toronto's Ryerson University in 1986. Two years later, she join Toronto's Second City theater troupe, moving to Chicago's Second City stage shortly thereafter. After moving to Los Angeles to continue acting, Vardalos received bit parts on such sitcoms as The Drew Carey Show.
Drawing on her eccentric Greek upbringing, as well as stories shared by her Greek friends, Vardalos soon began penning a stage play entitled My Big Fat Greek Wedding. The one-woman play drew the attention of actress Rita Wilson and husband Tom Hanks who agreed to turn it into a film. For a paltry $5 million, My Big Fat Greek Wedding debuted in 2002 to become the sleeper hit of the year. With virtually no television or buildboard advertising, the independent film drew record numbers by sheer word-of-mouth momentum. In February 2003, CBS briefly ran a follow-up sitcom My Big Fat Greek Life, which featured much of the same cast. In 2004, Vardalos wrote and costarred in another film, Connie and Carla, about two women who go undercover as drag queens.

Vardalos married actor Ian Gomez in September 1993.