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"People know they have seen me somewhere, but they don't know where. They think I'm their next-door neighbor."

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Whether or not you know her by name, you'll almost certainly recognize Tina Majorino at a glance. A charming and versatile performer, Majorino started young in sitcoms and TV movies, and while she has been featured front-and-center on relatively few movie posters, her characters are frequently the best part of any project she is a part of. Not a movie star, but the very definition of a "working actress," 

To many viewers, Majorino was first introduced to us as Enola in Kevin Costner's post-apocalyptic adventure film Waterworld (1995). The movie has since become a cult classic but was initially released to lukewarm reception with reviews generally criticizing the movie, but praising the abilities of Majorino as a young girl with a map to a mythical "dry land" tattooed on her back. To others, she will always be Dr. Heather Brooks on Grey's Anatomy (2012-13). No matter where you first saw Tina Majorino, she probably left an impression.

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A Working Actress From The Start

"I was not pushed into the business by anything other than my own ambition and my own dream of wanting to act."

Born to Sarah and Robert Majorino in February of 1985 in Westlake, California, Tina Majorino was not ushered into acting by stage parents, but by her own passion for the craft. She landed her first role at seven years old in the sitcom Camp Wilder (1992-93). The show followed single mother Ricky Wilder, raising not only her own child, but her teenaged siblings. Majorino was a standout as Ricky's daughter, Sophie, and soon made her film debut in When a Man Love a Woman (1994), working alongside acting heavyweights Andy Garcia, Meg Ryan and Phillip Seymour Hoffman from a script by Al Franken and Ronald Bass. Majorino featured as Meg Ryan's daughter, Jess, coming of age in a troubled household.

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Next came Waterworld (1995), which had developed a reputation well before its release for its troubled production, involving dangerous stunts, set collapses and creative differences in the director's chair, but you wouldn't know it to ask Majorino about her experience on the film's set. “It was great. It was great. The whole thing was the best!” she told one interviewer. She suffered jellyfish stings at least three times during the shooting of the film, but ultimately regarded the experience to be the most fun a ten year old girl could have shooting a movie.

After one more theatrical film, Santa Fe (1997), and a handful of TV roles, Majorino would take a long break from acting, with the  lead role in an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland (1999) being her only job between Merry Christmas, George Bailey (1997) and her return to acting in 2004. Majorino cited potential burnout as a reason for her career hiatus. "I didn't want to become like so many of the young people I've worked with who have money, fame and success, but don't know who they are as people."

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Second Run

After graduating high school at just fifteen years old, Majorino made a major comeback at eighteen years old as the shy but ambitious Deb in the cult favorite Napoleon Dynamite (2004). Here Majorino proved herself as one of the most intriguing and inventive character actresses on the scene, and she would be cast as series regular Cindy "Mac" MacKenzie in Veronica Mars (2004-07), Special Agent Genevieve Shaw in Bones (2011-12), and Molly in season five of vampire drama True Blood (2012). Around the mid-2000's, she had a reunion with Waterworld costar Jeanne Tripplehorn, featuring together in the TV series Big Love (2006-11). She would even return to the role that kicked off the second stage of her career, voicing Deb in the animated adaptation of Napoleon Dynamite (2012).

If there's not much gossip to discuss surrounding Tina Majorino, that may owe to the long break that Tina took from acting during her formative years. "Ordinarily, during the stage of your life when you're going through your adolescence and you're completely awkward and uncomfortable, the rest of the world isn't watching you with bated breath. It's different when you're an actor and you choose to work your way through that period because it only makes it worse." Outside of acting and the occasional Instagram story, Majorino generally leads a fairly private life. No major Hollywood flings, no awkward interviews, just a humble working actress.

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Majorino has stayed busy in recent years, playing Florence in twelve episodes of the fourth season of Scorpion (2017-18), and featuring in the fan-financed Veronica Mars (2014) feature film, returning as Cindy MacKenzie, and singing in the band The AM Project, with her brother Kevin, where she lends a smoky jazz-club vibe to the group's bass-heavy grooves.

Owing to her easy charm and sharp, funny approach to her characters, Majorino has become a go-to actress for casting directors looking to fill the role of an appealing outsider, "I've tended to play the outcast. I don't know, more nerdy types." She has also featured in a number of music videos, including Blind (2005), for Lifehouse, and F'in Perfect (2010), for pop-punk rocker P!nk.

"I really feel like I'm going to be an actress for the rest of my life."