Anna Akana

Anna Kay Napualani Akana (born August 18, 1989) is an American actress, comedian, filmmaker, musician, and YouTuber.

On February 14, 2007, Akana's younger sister, Kristina, died by suicide aged 13.

Several months after, Akana watched Margaret Cho perform on a Comedy Central special and laughed for the first time since her sister's death.

She began to see laughter as a means of trying to move on with her life and decided to seriously pursue comedy.

Akana has been vocal about her sister's suicide and is a strong advocate for suicide prevention.

She has appeared in TV series, films, and music videos that include Awkward (2011), Ant-Man (2015), Hello, My Name is Doris (2016), and Dirty 30 (2016).

Akana first started performing comedy at age 19 but switched to YouTube video performances in 2011 after experiencing panic attacks and anxiety before going on stage.

She later resumed performing stand-up onstage.

In 2011, Akana appeared in the TV series Awkward. In that same year, she also appeared as an extra in Katy Perry's "Last Friday Night" music video.

In 2013, Akana uploaded a YouTube video, "please don't kill yourself", in which she explains how it felt for her to have a family member die by suicide.

In that same year, she released a book Surviving Suicide which contains her journal entries from the two years after her sister's death.

In 2014, Akana formed a comedy music duo, Cat Benatar, with fellow comedian and writer Megan Rosati.

(The duo's name is wordplay for the pop singer Pat Benatar.)

Akana creates both comedy and documentary YouTube videos.

In 2014, Akana was listed on New Media Rockstars Top 100 Channels, ranked at #72.

In that same year, Akana decided to focus more on her skills as a director and attempted to make one short film a month.

While she did not reach her goal of twelve short films, she did make six short films which were received well by her YouTube audience.

Akana starred in all of her short films and has starred in various other short films, and she has since continued to create short films.

One of her short films, Miss Earth, was partially financed by Brian Grazer and Ron Howard's production company, New Form Digital.

It was part of the 2014 Incubator, a series to showcase and produce original stories by YouTube Creators and filmmakers.

Miss Earth was later adapted into a web series, Miss 2059, and released on Verizon's go90 app in June 2016, with a second season released in late 2017.

In 2015, she launched a clothing line Ghost & Stars.

In 2015, she appeared in the films Ant-Man and Kids vs Monsters.

Akana starred in Snapper Hero, a scripted video series distributed via Snapchat.

The series was sponsored by AT&T.

In 2016, Akana appeared alongside Sally Field in the indie comedy film Hello, My Name Is Doris, written by Michael Showalter.

That same year, she also appeared in a short Star Wars fan film, Hoshino as well as the comedy film Dirty 30.

She has a recurring role in the Comedy Central show Corporate.

She is the author of So Much I Want to Tell You: Letters to My Little Sister (2017), in which she describes her struggles and experiences.

Akana's father was an officer in the United States Marine Corps, including during her childhood.

Her father moved every few years to a new state or country.

In October 2018, she came out as bisexual.

Akana executive produced and starred as the lead role in the original comedy-drama web television series Youth & Consequences, created by Jason Ubaldi and released in March 2018 on YouTube Red.

In 2019, she stated in a post to her Instagram that she had undergone an abortion when she was 20 and felt it was one of the best decisions she'd ever made.

She mentioned this fact in one of her books and later created a dramatized movie uploaded on YouTube, which presented her story.

Akana is of Japanese, Filipino, Hawaiian, Spanish, French, Irish, German and English descent.

She is also the host of the web series Crash Course Business: Entrepreneurship beginning in August 2019.

On October 10, 2019, she was featured in a 30-minute YouTube documentary created by SoulPancake in collaboration with Funny or Die wherein a variety of comedians discuss mental health called Laughing Matters.

In a 2020 interview, she said that she loved Sailor Moon, Inuyasha and Ranma ½, expressing her surprise that her dad would make them watch Tenchi Muyo! with him despite its "perverted" nature.

Her father stated that she loved shows like The Powerpuff Girls, animation in general, and anime, the latter especially because she spent "four years growing up in Japan".