MARIANA TOSCA starred in Christmas in the Clouds opposite Graham Greene and Wes Studi and in the acclaimed I Knew a Girl Named Hollywood, which earned her a Best Actress Award from the SFIndy Film Festival. She also starred in War and The Rites of Spring, the story of Catherine of Aragon, for which she won the Breakthrough Performance Award from the ICA Critics Society. She has been featured in So I Married an Axe Murderer, John Carpenter's Village of the Damned, and The Doors.

For decades, Mariana has been at the forefront of the human, environmental and animal protection movements and founded the Los Angeles Homeless Coalition, offering shelter, relief and skills training to the homeless population there, which earned her an Artists for Humanity award for her dedication and efforts.
In the winter of 2010, Mariana will be producing and starring in Earth Echoes, a theatrical production that will run in Los Angeles as a benefit for several environmental and animal protection nonprofit organizations.

An Ovation Award nominee, Tosca's theatre credits include starring as Lady Torrance in Orpheus Descending at The Actors' Playhouse, as the title role in Medea at Artemis Players, as the Marquise de Merteuil in Les Liaisons Dangereuse at LA Theatresports, as Paulina in Death and the Maiden at Northwest Repertory, as Jessie in 'night Mother at the Goodson Theatre, and as the Baker's Wife in Into the Woods at the Roundstone Theatre.

Having just wrapped production on Equine Destiny, a documentary that she co-produced and starred in, about America's horse slaughter industry, she is now filming the pilot for the TV series New Frontiers, which will take viewers along as she rescues slaughter-bound horses from a kill buyer feedlot and releases them onto a wild horse sanctuary. (Over the last two years, she has pulled 350 horses from slaughter pipelines throughout the United States and returned them to a life of freedom.)

Mariana studied Acting at the American Conservatory Theatre and has served on the Board of Directors of the Alliance Repertory Company and Theatre East and is a member of Women in Film and Mensa International.   She volunteers teaching Drama, as well as Voice & Movement, at the Academy of Music for the Blind, where she also serves as a Board member.

Being a lifelong human, environmental and animal protection advocate she continues to lecture on issues of Animal Advocacy and The Role of the Artist in Social Change throughout History.
She sits on the Advisory Board of ElephantVoices, DreamCatcher Wild Horse & Burro Sanctuary, Born Free USA, the National Equine Resource Network.

Mariana sits on the Honorary Board of Voice for the Animals Foundation along with Lily Tomlin, Olympia Dukakis, Jorja Fox and Wolfgang Petersen. She also proudly serves alongside
Dr. Jane Goodall on the Advisory Council of Save the Chimps, the world's largest chimpanzee sanctuary which is home to hundreds of chimpanzees retired from the NASA space program, bio-medical research and the entertainment & pet trades.

Additionally, she serves on the Board of TheTenDollarClub.org which is a nonprofit that funds poverty alleviation projects around the world. To date, they have undertaken 80 projects in 62 countries, providing lifechanging services for thousands of people in underdeveloped countries.

Currently, Mariana is still leading the campaign for the release of Billy the Asian elephant from the Los Angeles Zoo. The Los Angeles Court of Appeals has granted approval to proceed with the trial against the Los Angeles Zoo for abuse and neglect of the 14 elephants who have died there.