Petrea Burchard

Petrea Burchard is an American actress and writer who began her career in Chicago theater with the Second City and Victory Gardens companies. She studied Shakespeare at Chicago Shakespeare Repertory and with Royal Shakespeare Company members at the British/American Drama Academy, later playing Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra and Tamora in Titus Andronicus. She also originated roles in plays by James Sherman, including The God of Isaac and The Escape Artist. On television she guest starred on dramas and comedies such as ER, The West Wing, Joan of Arcadia, and How I Met Your Mother. In film, she was the opening woman in Death Becomes Her (1992). Her most recognizable credit is voicing Ryoko, a space pirate, in the English dub of the anime Tenchi Muyo!. As a writer, she published the novel Camelot & Vine and the essay collection Act As If: Stumbling Through Hollywood with Headshot in Hand, drawn from her column for NowCasting.com.