“Acting is the creation of empathy. It is my mission to expand the audiences awareness of humanity through my work. I achieve this by seeing the life of a character, liberating their suffering and telling stories from a first person experience. The more honest I am, the more relatable and compelling the story will be. Finding out why and exploring new ways to walk in another’s shoes is true freedom. It is my goal to transcend the audience and help them accept humanity a little bit more through my work. ”
~ Catherine Black
Catherine Black AKA Cat Black (she/they) is a Canadian-American director-writer, actor, visual artist and acting teacher in Los Angeles and Toronto. She is a proud member of SAG-AFTRA, AEA, ACTRA, CAEA and the Alliance of Women Directors. Catherine grew up training for the Olympics as a gymnast, gaining discipline and a command of space. One of Catherine’s first roles as an actor was playing Vanden in American Psycho, directed by Mary Haron, where she first realized she wanted to direct one day.
Catherine has been a professional actor since 1994, best known for American Psycho, The Donner Party, Odyssey 5 and most recently, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, in what fans hail as “the best Trek episode of the century.” A recent career highlight was performing in the LA Alliance Ovation award wining Best Production of a Large Theatre And Then They Came For Me with MainStreet theatre, doing talkbacks with Holocaust survivors and scholars after each performance for a thousand children a day. As a visual artist, Catherine has painted large surreal figurative oil paintings that have exhibited internationally since 2001 and still enjoys painting in their spare time.
Catherine’s extensive practice as an actor and artist has rooted their vision in filmmaking. She was lucky to shadow a few talented directors early in their career, and went on to produce commercials, short films and music videos before directing their first narrative film in 2012. Catherine has written-directed and starred in 2 short films – the ‘sexy and surreal’ awarding winning film, De Puta Madre a Love Story, and Girl Trip, a dark comedy about female friendships, that took home 5 awards and acquired worldwide SVOD/VOD distribution. Catherine was also hired to direct Like Nothing Happened, a relationship drama that won Best Drama at 2021 Rock The Shorts Film Festival and is distributed on The Reel Women’s Network, and in is in pre-production to direct The Test, a short film about sisters, abortion and opposing beliefs. She is currently in preproduction for a film that she wrote and will direct inspired by a true family story about Japanese occupied Shanghai and is developing their first feature film. Catherine divides their time between Los Angeles and Toronto, always working on various projects for both markets, as a director-writer and performer.
View Catherine Black’s complete filmography on imdb
View Catherine’s Directors Reel
Catherine’s paintings can be viewed here.
Directing Samples viewed HERE