Photo of Jeanne Sakata by Timothy Patterson
Actress and playwright Jeanne Sakata has enjoyed a career spanning nearly four decades in television and feature films, stage, voiceover, and writing for stage and screen. Most recently, Jeanne recently enjoyed recurring and guest star roles on ABC-Shondaland’s Station 19, Magnum PI, NCIS Hawai’i, NCIS Los Angeles, Marvel/Hulu’s Hit Monkey, Disney Plus’ High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, and Disney’s Big Hero 6. This year, Jeanne was featured in the 2025 national tour of Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich’s Here There Are Blueberries (2024 Pulitzer Prize Finalist; 2025 Lucille Lortel Award, Outstanding New Play) at the McCarter Theatre, The Wallis Annenberg Center and Berkeley Repertory Theatre, after performing in its 2022 world premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse. Jeanne also won accolades in Center Theatre Group’s 2023 revival of Anna Deavere Smith’s Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 (Ticketholder Award, Best Actress In A Play, Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Nomination, Best Revival), and delighted New York audiences as soulful and spunky “Mom”
in the Vineyard Theatre’s Off-Broadway premiere of the comedy
Do You Feel Anger? Of her portrayal, New York Times’ Ben
Brantley raved: “Ms. Sakata is so touchingly, desperately beseeching
that you may feel the need to call your own mother as soon as the
curtain falls.”
Jeanne’s celebrated solo play Hold These Truths (2013 Drama Desk Nomination, Outstanding Solo Performance; 2019 Theatre Bay Awards, Outstanding Production, Principal Performance and Direction) has been touring the country in recent years at Arena Stage, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley (extended runs), Barrington Stage (encore run), People’s Light, Guthrie Theater, Pasadena Playhouse, Portland Center Stage, ACT Seattle, PlayMakers Rep, San Francisco Playhouse, Sacramento’s Capital Stage, San Diego Rep, Perseverance Theatre, Honolulu Theatre for Youth (Daniel Dae Kim, co-producer), Terra Nova Collective, Silk Road Rising, Coachella Valley Rep, Plays and Players, and New Century Theatre, after its 2007 world premiere at East West Players and its 2012 Off-Broadway premiere with the Epic Theatre Ensemble. Winning rave reviews from The New Yorker, New York Times and other AP critics. Hold These Truths aired on Philadelphia TV on the PBS station, WHYY TV, in a filmed performance by People’s Light , and is also available internationally as an audio play, produced by L.A. Theatre Works. Developed by the Lark Play Development Center and New York Theatre Workshop, it is inspired by the true story of Japanese American civil rights giant Gordon Hirabayashi, to whom President Obama posthumously awarded in 2012 a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. Hold These Truths,, now published by Ageloff Books and available on Amazon, is 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 2011.
Jeanne’s recently completed two new audio plays commissioned and produced by LA Theatre Works: an adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnet’s The Secret Garden (2025 Audie Award Finalist for Best Middle Grade; 2024 Earphones Award for Poetry and Drama); and For Us All, inspired by the 1980s coram nobis legal battle of Fred Korematsu. She is currently working on a new play, Springs, for DC’s Ford Theatre Legacy Commission program. She also recently narrated two audiobooks, Sequoia Nagamatsu’s How High We Go in the Dark, and Domenico Starnone’s Trust, translated from the original Italian by Jhumpa Lahiri.
Throughout her career, Jeanne has won accolades for dynamic portrayals in both comedy and drama. Called a “local treasure” by The Los Angeles Times, Jeanne’s additional screen credits include Jennifer Phang’s internationally acclaimed indie sci-fi film, Advantageous (US Dramatic Special Jury Award for Collaborative Vision, 2015 Sundance Film Festival, 2016 Film Independent Spirit Award Nomination), and on TV, guest/recurring roles on “Dr. Ken,” Bravo’s “True Fiction,” “NUMB3RS,” Tyler Perry’s “Meet the Browns,” “Desperate Housewives,” “Presidio Med,” “ER,” “Threat Matrix,” “Line of Fire,” “American Family,” John Ridley’s “I Got You,” “Hiroshima,” and “Sex and Marriage,” a Justin Lin YOMYOMF YouTube webseries. Onstage, Jeanne has played opposite such legendary actors as Chita Rivera, Estelle Parsons, and the late Raul Julia at the Public Theater, Lincoln Center Theater, Kennedy Center, Mark Taper Forum, South Coast Rep, La Jolla Playhouse, American Conservatory Theater, Sundance Theatre Institute, Berkeley Rep, Intiman Theatre, A Contemporary Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Portland Center Stage, People’s Light, Syracuse Stage and the Arizona Theatre Company, and she is a member of LA’s acclaimed classical group, the Antaeus Company.
Special honors: Los Angeles Ovation Award for Outstanding Lead Actress, Chay Yew’s Red, East West Players, 2016 Lee Melville Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Los Angeles Theatre Community, Playwrights’ Arena; Outstanding Artist Award, Los Angeles’ Pacific American Friends of Theatre; City of Pasadena Certificate of Recognition for Hold These Truths; Monaco Charity Film Festival Best Actress Award, Adultolescence; Stage Scene Outstanding Performance, Master Class), Entertainment Today Best Supporting Actress Award, A Winter People, and the Drama-Logue Outstanding Performance Award,The Maids.
