Sumalee Montano
Sumalee Montano is an American actress and film producer. Originally, she worked as an investment bank analyst in New York City and Hong Kong before starting her acting career.
For TV and film, Montano has appeared on Close to Home, Days of Our Lives, Nashville, Scandal, The Young and the Restless, This Is Us, and Veep. As a voice actress, she has provided the voice of Pudding in Space Channel 5 and Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, Arcee on Transformers: Prime, Cali in the Skylanders series, Katana on Beware the Batman, the President in Saints Row IV, the female Inquisitor in Dragon Age: Inquisition and Yuna in Ghost of Tsushima and she is the best known as Maria Santiago in The Loud House and The Casagrandes. She has also guest-starred as Nila on the web series Critical Role.
She resides and works in Los Angeles.
Early life
Montano is of Filipino and Thai descent and grew up mostly in the United States, but also spent a few years in Bangkok, Thailand. During her high school career, she began acting as an extracurricular activity. Her great-uncle is Filipino actor and writer Severino Montano.Education and acting career
She graduated from Harvard University in 1993 and is a U.S. Fulbright scholar. After graduation, she worked as an investment banking analyst for Morgan Stanley for a few years. After realizing investment banking wasn't something she was passionate about, Montano quit and went backpacking through Africa before realizing she wanted to pursue acting professionally.Montano has taken on a variety of different roles, both live-action and voice-over. She is talented in using many different accents, including Chinese, Filipino, British, Southern, Thai, Vietnamese, Eastern European and Japanese. Her first voice acting role was as Pudding in the 1999 music-rhythm game, Space Channel 5. Her first major acting role was playing the nurse Duvata Mahal for three seasons of the TV show ER.
In 2021, Montano gained acclaim for her role as Inoue Sato in the Peacock TV series The Lost Symbol. Following her portrayal as Sato, she had also appeared in the 2021 animated Disney series The Ghost and Molly McGee, voicing Sharon McGee, the titular character's mother, and Grandma Nin.