Lea Floden is a Los Angeles based actor, writer, director and acting coach.
Lea studied theatre at Boston University and Indiana University, where she also studied voice in the Eileen Farrell Studio. In NYC, she studied with many of the important 20th century acting teachers, including Stella Adler, William Esper, Uta Hagen, Norman Ayrton (Juilliard styles professor), Royal Shakespeare Company’s John Barton, and Elizabeth Kemp.
Lea has taught acting, voice and speech, period styles, and Shakespeare for over twenty years, and also has enjoyed great success in coaching young professionals for TV, film, and theater, as well as BFA and MFA auditions.
Lea’s students thrive professionally, and include yearly Spotlight and Young Arts Winners and Presidential Scholars, as well as Ovation and Dramalogue Award Winners (for professional theater). They are currently appearing on Broadway, have regularly appeared on television and film, and can be seen in musicals, contemporary, classic, and Shakespeare plays in NY, Chicago, and Los Angeles. They are consistently accepted into all of the best theater BFA and MFA programs in America and the UK, including Juilliard, Carnegie Mellon, Manhattan School of Music, LAMDA, RADA, Bristol Old Vic, RCS, and Guildhall. They also enjoy great success in the theater programs at their performing arts and other high schools across the LA area.
A Dramalogue, LA Weekly, Sundance, and Berlin Film Festival award-winning actress, Lea’s resume includes an abundance of work in television, film, and theater across the US, in Los Angeles, and in NYC (where she spent many years in residence at the legendary Circle Repertory Company). She has performed in the classics and world premieres by playwrights including Lanford Wilson, A.R. Gurney, and Jules Feiffer, and has been directed by a list of directors that includes RSC’s John Barton, Charles Nelson Reilly and Tony Award-winning Joe Mantello. She has done countless television and radio commercials, and her voice has been heard in Disney animated features and many children’s animated TV shows.
Lea is an award winning playwright and children’s book author and has had a book on the “Pediatrician’s Top Ten Books for Promoting Your Child’s Self Esteem” for the past 15 years.
As a teacher, Lea teaches employs the teaching of detailed technical skills, as she encourages students to find their own creative methodologies, to discover and trust their instincts, and to bravely search for their own personal truths and points of view.