Yaya DaCosta

Yaya DaCosta was born and raised in New York City along with her sister
and two brothers. She got her first acting gig at the age of eleven
when her junior high school drama teacher, Ann Willis Ratray,
encouraged her to audition for educational films. She continued to
perform in school shows throughout high school and college and in 2005, She was the runner-up in Cycle 3 of America's Next Top Model
made her feature film debut in Take the Lead. In 2008, she made her
Off-Broadway debut in "The First Breeze of Summer" at The Signature
Theater, for which she garnered rave reviews and won the Vivian
Robinson/AUDELCO Recognition Award for Excellence in Black Theater. She
has portrayed a range of characters, from Danny Glover's frail teenage
daughter in John Sayles' Honeydripper, to Mark Ruffalo's voluptuous
lover in Lisa Cholodenko's The Kids Are All Right. She has been tagged
one of Hollywood's new "it girls" by many, including Lynn Hirschberg
who featured her on the cover of W Magazine in September, 2010.