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Ana Alicia

Born Ana Alicia Ortiz Torres in Mexico City on December 12, 1956, Ana Alicia built a career that moved easily between theater, daytime drama, prime-time television and film. Her route into acting began at Wellesley College, where she won the lead role in Jules Feiffer’s Crawling Arnold. A summer position at the Adobe Horseshoe Dinner Theatre near El Paso gave her recurring stage work and an Actors’ Equity card. She later earned a bachelor’s degree in drama from the University of Texas at El Paso. After moving to Los Angeles in 1977, she landed the role of Alicia Nieves on the daytime soap Ryan’s Hope and relocated to New York for the production. Fifteen months later, she returned to Los Angeles and eventually committed to acting full-time under the professional name Ana Alicia. Her early television work showed a knack for stepping into vividly drawn genre worlds. She played Aurora in Battlestar Galactica, Gloria Alonzo in Galactica 1980 and Falina Redding in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. She also appeared as Drusilla in the television Western The Sacketts and took a major role in Coward of the County opposite Kenny Rogers. The part most closely associated with her television career arrived in 1982, when she was cast as Melissa Agretti on Falcon Crest. As the spoiled and selfish vineyard heiress, Ana Alicia had a character built for conflict, ambition and the heightened emotional stakes of prime-time drama. She also performed the songs “Goody Goody” and “Body and Soul” on the series. Her later work included the television movies Happy Endings and Miracle Landing, as well as guest appearances on Renegade. On the big screen, she appeared in Halloween II and Romero, the latter alongside Raúl Juliá. Across those roles, Ana Alicia’s career reflects the breadth of an actor equally at home in soap opera intrigue, science-fiction adventure, Western drama and fact-based television storytelling.