Holliston coleman - Simple English Wikipedia

# Holliston coleman

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Holliston Coleman began acting at age four when, on her first theatrical audition, she booked a role written for a six year old. Holliston was so convincing and articulate that despite no filming experience she booked the part of Horace Bing’s daughter on the popular and long-running television series Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, with Emmy and Golden Globe winner Jane Seymour. The part called for Holliston to master an extensive number of lines, to sing both in a group and solo, and to shed tears for her father.

Since then, Holliston has tackled a number of roles beyond her years. At the age of six, she booked the title role as “the Child” in the Paramount feature film Bless the Child, starring opposite Academy Award winner Kim Basinger. The role was described in the breakdown by the Paramount features casting director as “perhaps the toughest role ever written for a six year old.” Holliston played an autistic child overwhelmed by messages from God and pursued by agents of evil.

As a largely silent autistic child on screen the majority of the film, Holliston had to communicate a vast emotional range with expression and posture. One critic described her as having “dead-on instincts when acting with her face and body.” Her performance was hailed by critics nationwide, with the New York Times proclaiming her to be “enormously compelling â€¦ a real find.” People Magazine raved that “the best acting comes from Holliston, who brings real gravitas to her scenes.” Holliston received over sixty positive reviews nationwide.

Later, Holliston was selected from a national search to play the title role in a TNT film Miss Lettie and Me, filmed on location in Georgia, in which Holliston played opposite Mary Tyler Moore and Burt Reynolds, both Golden Globe and Emmy winners and Academy Award nominees. The filming of Miss Lettie and Me was extremely demanding in that Holliston filmed every day of the shoot and was on screen most of the film. She played Moore’s feisty niece who has unexpectedly come to live with her. The producer, Beth Poulson, noted that Holliston’s maturity, focus, ability, and sweetness were so unusual that she would recommend Holliston to “any production, anytime.”

Holliston also performed as the voice of Lilo’s classmate Aleka in Disney’s animated film Lilo & Stitch II.

Between films, Coleman continues to be offered extremely challenging roles in television dramas. In Law and Order: SVU, Holli played a pregnant 12 year old, the illegal wife of a cult leader whom she finally shoots, in what lead Marishka Haggerty called “an Emmy-worthy performance in her favorite episode”. In Medium, Holli plays a recurring role as the best friend of Patricia Arquette’s daughter. Touched by an Angel tapped Holliston for one of the biggest roles they’ve ever offered a child, calling for virtually continuous screen time as a near-orphan guided by angels in her search for her missing father. In Judging Amy, Holliston portrayed a difficult, emotionally charged based-on-truth story of a disturbed young girl whose mother eventually murdered her. In Ally McBeal, Holliston played a young girl torn by her father’s infidelity to her mother, and in ER, Holliston was asked to portray a young girl driven to kill her father in self-defense.

Holliston’s film experiences also include Supreme Sanction, in which she played opposite Michael Madsen and David Dukes as the daughter of a man pursued by assassins, and Norman Jewison’s Emmy-nominated Dinner with Friends, based on the Pulitzer Prize winning play of the same name. In Dinner with Friends, Holliston had the privilege of acting as the daughter of Academy Award nominee Toni Colette and Academy Award nominee Greg Kinnear, as well as with Dennis Quaid and Andie MacDowell.

Holliston has extensive international experience. She filmed Bless the Child for four months in Canada, and recently traveled to Sofia, Bulgaria to film Run for the Money, an action-drama with Christian Slater, Val Kilmer, and Daryl Hannah. Holliston portrayed Slater’s daughter, kidnapped by Kilmer.

Holliston has already accumulated a rich variety of experiences in film making. She has acted around fire and explosions, participated in car chase and accident stunts, had a full body double cast made (requiring her to be still while her entire head and body were wrapped in plaster), was in a harness two stories high against a green screen background (she did flips in the harness between takes for fun), has been filmed underwater, remained motionless for over an hour while special CG cameras were programmed frame by frame, acted against non-existent CG creatures, and acted under huge wind fans and rain-making equipment. Holliston has also acted with animals and birds, both live and animatronic.

For her title roles in Bless the Child, Holliston was honored with a prestigious Saturn Award nomination for Best Performance by a Younger Actor from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films. For her title roles in both Bless the Child and Miss Lettie and Me, Holliston received Young Artist Award nominations for Best Performance. In honor of her inspiring role as Cody in Bless the Child, Holliston was asked to be a Presenter at the televised Family Film Awards.

In spite of Holliston’s interesting and busy life as an actress, she remains a normal kid with an array of friends from church and neighborhood, and has surrounded herself with a variety of pets and outside activities. Holli and her family have owned and loved pets including: dogs, cats, rabbits, sheep, chinchillas, hedgehogs, parrots, guinea pigs, mice, lizards, frogs, fish, and a large tortoise. Holli is currently taking swim and diving training at the Olympic Rose Bowl Aquatic Center. She also takes gymnastics and piano lessons. Holli loves to sing and dance.

Holli enjoys learning new accents for her potential roles. She has been tutored by Robert Easton, the renowned “Henry Higgins of Hollywood” for various accents from Irish to Santa-Fe Western. Easton says Holliston is a quick study with an excellent ear and a remarkable ability to pick up the nuances of language.

Holli home-schools year-round with her mother Doris (a former writing instructor at USC and Cal State University, Northridge), her father Bob (a Caltech grad and software development engineer), and her younger brother Bobby, whom she in turn is helping to educate.

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