Julyana Soelistyo

Julyana Soelistyo is an American stage and film actress born in Sumatra, Indonesia, to Roman Catholic parents. She received her early education in Penang, Malaysia, where she studied piano and violin. She later enrolled at Oregon State University, performing in productions of The Tempest, Les Liaisons Charmantes, The Misanthrope, and Piaf. Following her 2002 graduation, she pursued an MFA at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. While still building her early career, between 1995 and 1997, Soelistyo performed at the Seattle Children's Theatre, playing the title roles in Naomi's Road, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Still Life with Iris, each of which featured child protagonists.

Soelistyo's introduction to playwright David Henry Hwang came through a recommendation by Hwang's friend Judy Nihei, which led to her participation in the debut reading of Golden Child in California. She was chosen to originate the role of Eng Ahn, portraying the character at both age ten and age eighty within the same production. Golden Child premiered at the Off-Broadway Joseph Papp Public Theater before being reworked and transferred to Broadway's Longacre Theatre, where Soelistyo continued in the role. Her performance drew considerable critical attention, with The New York Times's Vincent Canby calling it "magical" and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer naming her an "outstanding female newcomer." For the role, she won a Clarence Derwent Award and received a 1998 Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play, ultimately losing to Anna Manahan.

Her stage work extended across numerous regional and institutional productions. She played Cordelia and the Fool in the 1998 New Jersey Shakespeare Festival's King Lear, appeared as Imogen in Cymbeline at Seattle's Intiman Theatre, and took the role of Dorie in the world premiere of On the Jump. She also appeared in the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Pericles as the Daughter of Antiochus and Marina, and performed in Yale Repertory Theatre's Iphigenia at Aulis. In 2010, Soelistyo returned to the role of Ariel in The Tempest, this time at the Stratford Festival opposite Christopher Plummer. That production was filmed in 2010 and received theatrical release in Canada and the United States in 2012. Her Broadway career spanned from 1998 to 2022, with credits including The Skin of Our Teeth in addition to Golden Child.

On screen, Soelistyo appeared in the films Earthly Possessions and Martin Scorsese's Bringing Out the Dead. Steven Spielberg cast her in the role of Pumpkin in Memoirs of a Geisha, though the part was ultimately filled by Youki Kudoh.

Soelistyo is married to Tim Barrett, whom she met at Oregon State University when he worked on stage lighting for the university's theatre program. Barrett had previously been a pre-med student there.