Amy Aquino

Amy Aquino is an American actress born on March 20, 1957, in Teaneck, New Jersey. She has worked across stage, film, and television throughout her career, earning recognition in each medium.

Aquino's path to acting was not direct. She enrolled at Harvard University as a biology major but found herself devoting more time to acting than to her studies. She left before completing her degree and relocated to New York City, where she took acting classes while working at a law firm. After three years without securing acting work, she moved to Minneapolis, where she landed her first professional roles. In 1986, following two years of further rejections, she entered the Yale University School of Drama, completing a three-year program there.

Following her graduation from Yale, Aquino spent five years working in New York. During that period she performed alongside Kevin Spacey at Playwrights Horizons and became a member of the Circle Repertory Company. In 1989, she appeared on Broadway in Wendy Wasserstein's The Heidi Chronicles, which received the Tony Award for Best Play that year. That same year she made her film debut in two productions: Moonstruck, in which she played Loretta's hairdresser, and Working Girl, in which she appeared as Melanie Griffith's secretary.

In 1991, Aquino was cast as one of the leads in the television series Brooklyn Bridge. The show's renewal for a second season prompted her move to California. Her subsequent television work included ER, The Larry Sanders Show, and Everybody Loves Raymond. In 1995, she received a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for her portrayal of Dr. Joanna "Joey" Diamond in Picket Fences. She later appeared in the 2013 season of Being Human as the witch Donna, and played college President Dalley in the 2015 film The Lazarus Effect, which also starred Sarah Bolger, Mark Duplass, and Olivia Wilde. She went on to star in Amazon Studios' Bosch as Lieutenant Grace Billets, a role she sustained through the series' seventh and final season, the renewal for which was announced on February 13, 2020.

Aquino also maintained a presence in off-Broadway theater. In 2005, she appeared in Wasserstein's Third in a production at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and she performed in Secrets of the Trade by Jonathan Tolins at the 59E59 Theaters.

Beyond performing, Aquino held significant positions within the actors' union. She joined the Screen Actors Guild in 1987 and previously served two terms as first vice president of the organization. On September 24, 2009, she was named co-secretary-treasurer of SAG, was re-elected to that position in 2011 without opposition, and subsequently became the first secretary-treasurer of the newly merged SAG-AFTRA, serving in that role until August 2015.

In her personal life, Aquino met Drew McCoy after relocating to California. The two married in 1995 at Saint Malachy's Roman Catholic Church in Manhattan. Together they purchased and renovated the Villa Royale, an inn located in Palm Springs, California, a project that spanned two years. Her parents, Adele Frances Mesiti Aquino and Salvatore Aquino, were themselves involved in film production as bit and extra players, appearing in projects shot near Wilmington, North Carolina, including From the Hip and Date with an Angel, both in 1987, and Windmills of the Gods in 1988.