Melissa Riso

Melissa Riso was born June 27, 1986, in Monterey, California, and was raised in a nearby small town called Salinas. She moved to San Diego right after high school and soon after graduated from beauty college.

While growing her business as a professional hairstylist and makeup artist, she was cutting hair for a local news reporter who suggested she try modeling. Over time she became very popular with the import tuner scene and was on the covers of twelve magazines. She also did background work on TV shows such as “Las Vegas” and “Greek.”

Melissa started booking roles on infomercials and local commercials. The camera loved her and she was extremely comfortable being in front of the camera. Her goal was to keep doing background work and small commercials to one day get her SAG card.

In 2011 Melissa moved to Los Angeles to take her acting career to the next level. While attending local acting schools such as Groundlings, Ivana Chubbuck, and Margie Habor, she was booking lead roles in music videos. She got to work with Chris Brown, T.I., E 40, Travis Barker, Pharrell Williams, and many more well-known artists.

By late 2013 Melissa started booking more modeling jobs for clothing lines and skincare products. Melissa started booking roles in short films such as “Timid Pimps,” “Jungle Dead Two,” “TeleviSean,” “Spare Change” and many more. These roles helped her invest in acting classes and to stay focus on her acting career.

Melissa’s biggest success in 2014 was when she landed her first lead role in a national Pepsi commercial. Then booking commercials for Fila and LA Fitness to top off her success that year.

She finally got her SAG-AFTRA card in 2015 and is now ready to get into bigger films and TV shows.

Melissa Riso continues to take acting classes and train in Krav Maga for her feature action role that she dreams of in the future.

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