Bella Zoe Martinez

Bella had an accidental start in acting in 2012 at the age of 7, appearing in an anti bullying PSA for an autism therapy company for parent training. As fate would have it, she returned to acting years later in 2018, as a coping mechanism to overcome being a victim of severe bullying and as a way to learn to socialize and communicate with peers again. She attended The Playground LA Young Actors Conservatory under Gary Spatz and Gayla Goehl, appeared in a few commercials, one of which was with Jonah Hill for Instagram, then landing her first feature film roles in The Infiltrators (2019), which won the Sundance Next award, and The Vanished (2020), directed by Peter Facinelli. Other credits include Angel Girl (2020), Mama's Ducks (voice/singing for Mama Duck, Baby Otter, Little Duck and others) (2021), finally, making the transition to storyteller, with her first short film she helped develop, Glory & Injustice (2022) to her current project, Once More, Like Rain Man (2024), where she also stars with some of the most noted talent in Hollywood, directed by Sue Ann Pien. Bella has become an advocate for autistic filmmakers being the creative force behind the stories they want to tell, not just as a mechanism in film and TV as an obstacle to overcome or part of another character's growth arc.to both portray and advocate for the autism community that's incredibly underrepresented, and bring focus to the concept that autism is a wide ranging spectrum, and autistic people are not defined by a perception of their disability . She put this into practice, where in Once More, Like Rain Man, nearly 40% of the cast and crew are neurodivergent or are differently abled, demonstrating accommodations aren't a handicap. Bella sometimes works with her parents, Andrew and Melissa, who are veterans in Hollywood, and her two older siblings, Alex and Kennedy, who are also on the autism spectrum, artists and animators.