Ana Alicia
- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Ana Alicia Ortiz Torres is a Mexican actress born in Mexico City, Mexico on December 12, 1956, the third of four children. Her parents, Alicia Torres Ortiz and Carlos Celestino Ortiz, were hotel agents in Acapulco, Guerrero, Mexico. She grew up in Acapulco, Mexico City, and El Paso, Texas from age 6 after her father died. In Texas she and her mother and siblings lived with their grandmother and Uncle Louie in a house her father had purchased for her grandmother.
Ana Alicia received a full scholarship to attend the prestigious Wellesley College in Massachusetts. Upon arrival, she auditioned for, and won, the lead role in Jules Feiffer's "Crawling Arnold". On summer break after her freshman year, she auditioned for The Adobe Horseshoe Dinner Theatre outside El Paso, Texas. The theater offered her a position as a recurring actress in all feature productions. The opportunity would allow her to work with name actors from Hollywood and New York and receive a large weekly salary. She accepted the offer and also acquired her actor's equity card through her term. She left Wellesley and finished her education at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). She spent the next three years, performing in main stage productions at UTEP as well as having significant roles in the Adobe Horseshoe repertoire.
After graduation, Ana Alicia moved to Los Angeles and struggled to attain success as an actress while studying for her law-school entrance exam. Six months later, her big acting break came when she won the role of Alicia Nieves on ABC's Ryan's Hope (1975). According to her, working on the show in New York was exciting--not only because it was an acting job, but because she was a fan of the the show. Although the role was a secondary one--Nieves had romances with policeman Bob Reid and Dr. Pat Ryan. It provided her with much-needed exposure.
After 15 months, Ana Alicia left the show to become one of the last Universal Studios contract players. She moved to Los Angeles and in addition to her work as a contract player, she attended Southwestern University Law School at night. As she acquired larger roles that required her to leave town, it became impossible to continue the grueling schedule of acting during the day and studying for school at night. She had to make a choice, so she sat down and wrote the pros and cons of each decision and when she realized her passion was to act, she made the very difficult decision to drop out of law school. Once she was fully focused, her career began to open up quickly.
She landed several roles on major television films and series episodes. Within a year, the Universal terminated their contract player department. It was the end of an era. Soon after, her teacher Milton Katselis suggested she stop playing virginal roles and turn to roles such as the tortured, sexually-deprived Maggie in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof". Exploring this previously undiscovered part of her acting range, Ana Alicia pursued an audition for Falcon Crest (1981). In the room was a female casting director Doris Sabbagh along with Earl Hamner, Robert McCollough, and Larry Elikann. Ana Alicia's job was to seduce Lorenzo, played in the room by Doris. As Ana Alicia ran her fingers up Doris' stockings, conservative Southerner Earl Hamner stood up and stopped the scene, and said, "Thank you very much. That was wonderful." Less than an hour later, Ana Alicia's agent called to let her know she had won the role of Melissa Agretti.
Ana Alicia was on the show for seven years, playing the ambitious, scheming Melissa Agretti and opposite Jane Wyman as Angela Channing, and a plethora of handsome men. In October of 1988, she was written out of Falcon Crest (1981), and the show subsequently dropped considerably in the ratings. In a last-ditch attempt to revitalize the show, she was brought back to the show later that season as a look-alike of Melissa's named Samantha Ross. The guest stint was short-lived and Ana Alicia quickly moved on to other projects, including the TV movies Miracle Landing (1990) and Rio Shannon (1993), as well as the feature film Romero (1989). Ana Alicia has also devoted much of her time to various animal and human causes. She was the national spokesperson for the Humane Society, and has presented awards promoting Hispanic achievements in the media on behalf of the Golden Eagle Awards. Lorenzo Lamas was co-presenter.
In 1991, while in France hosting an episode of The World's Greatest Stunts for GRB Entertainment, she met and fell madly in love with her now-ex-husband Gary Benz. In 1996, after finishing the pilot for Acapulco Heat, Ana Alicia made the decision to leave her acting career and invest in her new passion in life: being a mother to her two young children Cathryn and Michael.
In March 2015, with her younger child in college, she returned to her first love but as a producer opening up her own production company Quebrada Entertainment. Its purpose is to develop scripted and unscripted film and television that reaches a culturally and demographically diverse audience across all genres through the development and execution of quality storytelling.
Ana Alicia received a full scholarship to attend the prestigious Wellesley College in Massachusetts. Upon arrival, she auditioned for, and won, the lead role in Jules Feiffer's "Crawling Arnold". On summer break after her freshman year, she auditioned for The Adobe Horseshoe Dinner Theatre outside El Paso, Texas. The theater offered her a position as a recurring actress in all feature productions. The opportunity would allow her to work with name actors from Hollywood and New York and receive a large weekly salary. She accepted the offer and also acquired her actor's equity card through her term. She left Wellesley and finished her education at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). She spent the next three years, performing in main stage productions at UTEP as well as having significant roles in the Adobe Horseshoe repertoire.
After graduation, Ana Alicia moved to Los Angeles and struggled to attain success as an actress while studying for her law-school entrance exam. Six months later, her big acting break came when she won the role of Alicia Nieves on ABC's Ryan's Hope (1975). According to her, working on the show in New York was exciting--not only because it was an acting job, but because she was a fan of the the show. Although the role was a secondary one--Nieves had romances with policeman Bob Reid and Dr. Pat Ryan. It provided her with much-needed exposure.
After 15 months, Ana Alicia left the show to become one of the last Universal Studios contract players. She moved to Los Angeles and in addition to her work as a contract player, she attended Southwestern University Law School at night. As she acquired larger roles that required her to leave town, it became impossible to continue the grueling schedule of acting during the day and studying for school at night. She had to make a choice, so she sat down and wrote the pros and cons of each decision and when she realized her passion was to act, she made the very difficult decision to drop out of law school. Once she was fully focused, her career began to open up quickly.
She landed several roles on major television films and series episodes. Within a year, the Universal terminated their contract player department. It was the end of an era. Soon after, her teacher Milton Katselis suggested she stop playing virginal roles and turn to roles such as the tortured, sexually-deprived Maggie in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof". Exploring this previously undiscovered part of her acting range, Ana Alicia pursued an audition for Falcon Crest (1981). In the room was a female casting director Doris Sabbagh along with Earl Hamner, Robert McCollough, and Larry Elikann. Ana Alicia's job was to seduce Lorenzo, played in the room by Doris. As Ana Alicia ran her fingers up Doris' stockings, conservative Southerner Earl Hamner stood up and stopped the scene, and said, "Thank you very much. That was wonderful." Less than an hour later, Ana Alicia's agent called to let her know she had won the role of Melissa Agretti.
Ana Alicia was on the show for seven years, playing the ambitious, scheming Melissa Agretti and opposite Jane Wyman as Angela Channing, and a plethora of handsome men. In October of 1988, she was written out of Falcon Crest (1981), and the show subsequently dropped considerably in the ratings. In a last-ditch attempt to revitalize the show, she was brought back to the show later that season as a look-alike of Melissa's named Samantha Ross. The guest stint was short-lived and Ana Alicia quickly moved on to other projects, including the TV movies Miracle Landing (1990) and Rio Shannon (1993), as well as the feature film Romero (1989). Ana Alicia has also devoted much of her time to various animal and human causes. She was the national spokesperson for the Humane Society, and has presented awards promoting Hispanic achievements in the media on behalf of the Golden Eagle Awards. Lorenzo Lamas was co-presenter.
In 1991, while in France hosting an episode of The World's Greatest Stunts for GRB Entertainment, she met and fell madly in love with her now-ex-husband Gary Benz. In 1996, after finishing the pilot for Acapulco Heat, Ana Alicia made the decision to leave her acting career and invest in her new passion in life: being a mother to her two young children Cathryn and Michael.
In March 2015, with her younger child in college, she returned to her first love but as a producer opening up her own production company Quebrada Entertainment. Its purpose is to develop scripted and unscripted film and television that reaches a culturally and demographically diverse audience across all genres through the development and execution of quality storytelling.
