Jeanne Sakata

Jeanne Sakata is an award-winning actor and playwright whose versatility spans theater, television, film, voiceover animation, and audiobooks.

Recent TV recurring and guest-star roles include ABC/Shondaland’s Station 19, CBS’s Magnum P.I., NCIS: Hawai‘i, NCIS: Los Angeles, and Disney+’s High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, with her voice talents featured in Marvel’s animated series Hit-Monkey, Apple TV+’s Stillwater, Disney’s Big Hero 6, and Nickelodeon’s Avatar: The Last Airbender, as well as the audiobooks How High We Go in the Dark (2023 Audie Award finalist for Science Fiction) and Trust.

Onstage, Sakata just completed the 2025 national tour of Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich’s Pulitzer Prize–nominated Here There Are Blueberries (2025 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play). She was also featured in the 2023 revival of Anna Deavere Smith’s Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 at Center Theatre Group’s Mark Taper Forum. Additional stage credits include the Public Theater, Lincoln Center Theater, the Kennedy Center, La Jolla Playhouse, Vineyard Theatre, People’s Light Theatre, Northlight Theatre, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, Berkeley Rep, ACT San Francisco, ACT Seattle, and Portland Center Stage, to name a few.

Sakata’s first play, the celebrated solo work Hold These Truths, commissioned by Center Theatre Group, has had over two dozen productions across the country and continues to be produced nationally and internationally. Winning rave reviews from The New Yorker, The New York Times, and other AP critics, it is the recipient of numerous awards and has received encore or extended runs at Barrington Stage, Arena Stage, and TheatreWorks Silicon Valley.

Published by Ageloff Books and available in script or audio play form, Hold These Truths is also on display at the Library of Congress Playwrights Archive in the Asian American Pacific Islander Collection in Washington, DC, where the Jeanne Sakata Collection was established in July 2011.

Among numerous honors, Sakata has received the Los Angeles Ovation Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in Chay Yew’s Red, a Trailblazer Award for Outstanding Artistic Achievement and Raising the Visibility of the API Community from East West Players, and a Lee Melville Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Los Angeles Theatre Community from Playwrights’ Arena.