Mena Alexandra Suvari Bio

Suvari was born in Newport on 13 February 1979. She is the daughter of Candice (nee Chambers), and Ando Suvari, a psychiatrist. The mother of Suvari is Greek and her father is Parnu Estonian. Three of her older brothers are AJ, Sulev and Juri. When she was a teenager Suvari began modeling for Millie Lewis Models & Talent. Shortly after Suvari was featured in the Rice-A-Roni commercial. The family eventually moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where her siblings attended The Citadel. Suvari was considering becoming an archaeologistor astronaut, or doctor when a model agency visited her all-girls school, Ashley Hall, to offer classes. By the time she started acting, she was modeling for the New York-based Wilhelmina agency for five years. Suvari moved to California in 1997 and graduated from Providence High School in Burbank. Suvari began acting in guest appearances on television shows like Boy Meets World and ER at the age of 15 and 16, respectively. She also appeared in a number of episodes of the series High Incident, and played the role of a girl suffering from HIV in a single-episode role in Chicago Hope. With the role of Zoe in the 1997 independent drama about an upcoming drama about growing up, Nowhere, which was directed by Gregg Araki, and starring James Duval and Rachel True, Heather Graham and Ryan Phillippe, she moved from television to film. In 1997, she was an supporting role in the film of her own Snide and Prejudice, which was screened at the Cannes Film Festival, and was briefly in the thriller Kiss the Girls, opposite Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd. The following year, she appeared in the independent drama Slums of Beverly Hills, as a teenager's neighbour of a Jewish girl trying to become a woman in the latter part of the 1970s. The film premiered on a short run and garnered a loyal fan base. Suvari was also a part on the set of Slums as a teenage neighbor of a Jewish girl who is struggling to grow up in the latter part of the 1970s. In the horror sequel The Rage 2 (1999) she played a teen suicide victim. She also played the daughter and the investigator of the National Transportation Safety Board in the NBC mini-series Atomic Train (1999). Both films were criticised by critics.