Shira-Lee Shalit is a 42-year old acting teacher originally from Johannesburg, South Africa. She moved to Texas with her family when she was twelve years old and went to the High School for Performing & Visual Arts. She won the Presidential Scholar of the Arts Award on her senior year and got the chance to perform for the President at the White House. After graduating from NYU with a BFA in Drama, she further pursued film studies at Columbia University’s Graduate Film School where she megged her first short film, Full Cycle, which became a finalist in the Student Academy Awards. She then embarked on a teaching career as instructor in Acting for Film and Directing Actors at the New York Film Academy. Her first feature entitled A-List starred Melrose Place’s Daphne Zuniga, Sally Kirkland, Renee Taylor and her brother, Damon Shalit, who also wrote the film. It has been shown at various festivals and recently won the Gold Remi Award for Best Comedy at Houston's Worldfest International Film Festival, as well as the Audience Award at the Milan International Film Festival in Italy.
Shira-Lee Shalit is one of eighteen contenders for the $1 Million Dreamworks prize on the reality filmmaking show, On the Lot.
(Photo courtesy of FOX)