Q'orianka Kilcher

The film won Best Film at the 36th American Indian Film Festival in San Francisco, and Kilcher was nominated for Best Supporting Actress.

She also portrayed Kerrianne Larkin, daughter of Chibs Telford and Fiona Larkin, in the television series Sons of Anarchy.

Q'orianka Waira Qoiana Kilcher (born February 11, 1990) is an American actress.

She was selected to compete at the international Tahitian Dance Competition in San Jose, California, in 1996 and 1997.

She performed in over fifty professional dance performances island wide.

As a member of the Waikiki Singers, she was chosen to be the soprano soloist, performing Schubert's Mass in G and Amahl and the Night Visitors by Gian Carlo Menotti.

At the age of six years, Kilcher was the first child to study classical voice at the University of Hawaii with Laurance Paxton.

She also studied drama with Bill Ogilvie at the Diamond Head Theater.

When she was six, her mother booked her at venues as a featured singer and opening act to some of Hawaii's greats, such as Willie K (Kahaiali'i) among others.

In 1997, Kilcher won Ballet Hawaii's Young Choreographer Award at age seven.

In 1999, her mother moved the family to California.

Kilcher started to sing and dance for tourist donations, busking on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica.

At the age of ten, Kilcher was cast as Choire Who in Ron Howard's How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

She was 12 when she received a full scholarship to the Musician's Institute in Hollywood, where she studied vocal performance, music theory and songwriting.

She also studied martial arts and stunts: she is an accomplished black belt in Wushu kung fu and a stunt performer and has trained at the National Wushu Training Center and Impact Stunts.

Her best known film roles are Pocahontas in Terrence Malick's 2005 film The New World, and Kaiulani in Princess Kaiulani (2009).

At age 15, Q'orianka portrayed Pocahontas in the Academy Award-nominated motion picture The New World (2005), directed by Terrence Malick.

The film was released in December 2005.

The film was a critical success, receiving several positive reviews and award nominations, but it was shown in only 811 theatres worldwide.

It yielded a relatively low box office gross.

Her performance was critically acclaimed and won her the National Board of Review's best breakthrough performance of 2006, the 2006 Alma Award for best Latin American actress in a feature film, and numerous other award nominations.

In the summer of 2006, Kilcher began filming the independent film The Power of Few, which she produced through her own production company, Entertainment On-Q.

She played the title role in the 2009 feature film Princess Kaiulani.

In 2009, Kilcher performed in The People Speak, a documentary feature film that uses dramatic and musical performances of the letters, diaries, and speeches of common people in the U.S., based on historian Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States".

A year later, she played Pinti in the family drama Shouting Secrets.

The film, about the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, was released in May 2010 to negative reviews.

But Kilcher received positive feedback for her role, with Roger Ebert writing that "she evokes great depth and sympathy in her role and seems to have created Kaiulani from the inside out."

In 2011, Kilcher played Tiger Lily in Neverland, a version of the Peter Pan story that aired on the Syfy Channel.

In 2012, Kilcher starred in Firelight alongside Cuba Gooding Jr.. and played the role of Caroline Magabo, a young Latina inmate who finds a new lease on life by becoming a volunteer firefighter along with other female juvenile delinquents.

In 2013, she portrayed Rayen in Running Deer, an award-winning short film produced and directed by Brent Ryan Green through Toy Gun Films.

Kilcher starred as the Chickasaw Nation representative and actress Te Ata in the 2017 film Te Ata.

In 2018, Kilcher appeared in TNT's The Alienist as Mary Palmer.

In 2020, she starred in a recurring role on the Paramount Network show Yellowstone.

Kilcher was born in Schweigmatt, Baden-Württemberg, West Germany.

Her name Q'orianka means "Golden Eagle" in Quechua.

Her father is of Quechua–Huachipaeri background from Peru, while her mother, Saskia Kilcher, is an American human rights activist of Swiss-German origin.

When Kilcher was two, she and her mother moved to Kapaa, Hawaii where her brother Kainoa was born.

Her father, from whom she is estranged, was absent for much of her life.

Growing up in Hawaii, Kilcher was inspired by the local culture and started hula dancing at the age of five.

She also trained in Tahitian dance and West African, as well as ballet, hip hop and modern dance.