Julie Carmen

Julie Carmen is an American actress, dancer, and licensed psychotherapist of Afro-Cuban and Spanish/German ancestry, born in New York City. She received her acting training at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre under Sanford Meisner and at HB Studio under Uta Hagen and Alice Spivak. Her dance studies took place at the Merce Cunningham and Erik Hawkins Studios, as well as at the original Joseph Pilates studio in New York City, the latter leading to a 1979 teaching position at Ron Fletcher's Pilates Studio in Los Angeles.

Carmen danced on Broadway in 1979 in Luis Valdez's Zoot Suit. She also served as resident choreographer at INTAR under the direction of Max Ferra.

Her screen career gained significant attention in the 1980s and 1990s. Early film work included John Cassavetes' Gloria (1980) and Night of the Juggler (1980), followed by Comeback (1982) opposite Eric Burdon, Last Plane Out (1983), and Blue City (1986). She appeared in Robert Redford's The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), played the vampire Regine Dandrige in Fright Night Part 2 (1988), and starred in Paint It Black (1989). John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness (1994) and King of the Jungle (2000) opposite John Leguizamo followed, along with an appearance on NYPD Blue in 1999. Later film credits include Dawn Patrol (2014), You Can't Say No opposite Peter Fonda, and Windows on the World opposite Edward James Olmos.

On television, Carmen was a series regular as Linda Rodriguez Kirkridge on the ABC sitcom Condo (1983) and guest starred in three first-season episodes of the HBO series Dream On (1990) as Nina, an environmental revolutionary. She played the female lead in the 1992 NBC miniseries Drug Wars: The Cocaine Cartel and portrayed the mother of Angelina Jolie's character in the 1997 Hallmark Entertainment miniseries True Women. She starred opposite Val Kilmer in Gore Vidal's Billy the Kid, directed by Billy Graham, and appeared opposite George C. Scott in two television films, Finding the Way Home and Curacao. More recently, she starred as La Doña in Tales of the Walking Dead and guest starred as Sarah in the 2022 fall season of Grey's Anatomy.

In 2007, Carmen played the lead role of Liz Estrada in the Getty Villa's commissioned update of Lysistrata. She is also executive producer of the documentary feature Lico Jiménez the Ebony Liszt, directed by musicologist Isidro Betancourt, about her great grandfather José Manuel Jiménez Berroa.

Carmen served on the Board of Directors of Women in Film for three years, during which she delivered the keynote address at the WIF Gala at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel on the subject of Latinos and Latinas in Hollywood. She also served on the Board of Directors of IFP/West for six years and created the John Cassavetes Award for emerging filmmakers.

Beyond her performance career, Carmen holds a B.S. in theater and choreography from the State University of New York Empire State and a master's degree in clinical psychology from Antioch College. She is a licensed marriage and family therapist, certified through the International Association of Yoga Therapists and Yoga Alliance at the ERYT-500 level. She serves as Director of Mental Health at Loyola Marymount University Yoga Therapy Rx and as Director of Yoga Therapy for Behavioral Health in a supervised clinical practicum conducted in cooperation with Venice Family Clinic. Carmen was trained as a drama therapist by Ramon Gordon of Cell Block Theater and designed and led drama therapy and yoga therapy programs at Passages Drug and Alcohol Residential Treatment Center. She has also worked as a yoga therapist at Monte Nido Eating Disorder Centers and the Los Angeles School District's Program for Pregnant Teens. She published the article "Informed Consent for Yoga Therapists" in Yoga Therapy Today through the International Association of Yoga Therapists, and is referenced in Suzanne Somers' books A New Way to Age and Ageless in chapters titled Julie Carmen Yoga.