Rising Stars: Meet Ana Ming Bostwick-Singer of Los Angeles

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ana Ming Bostwick-Singer.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I’m an Asian American actress in Los Angeles working in film, TV and theater. Some of my TV credits include LINCOLN LAWYER (NETFLIX) and LANDMAN (PARAMOUNT+). In theater, EXOTIC DEADLY OR THE MSG PLAY (San Francisco Playhouse), METHUSALEM (The Actors’ Gang), and RAELYNN in JOHN PROCTOR IS THE VILLAIN (Ojai Playwrights Conference, South Coast Repertory). In film, I led the award-winning short WWII love story ONLY HERE AND NOW, a family project directed by my dad, and written and produced by my mom.

I grew up in the very sweet town of Ojai, CA, with my screenwriter parents. The house was always full of story outlines, deep conversations about character arcs, and my parents researching their next screenplay. I focused on dancing and studio arts, and was a passionate environmental activist. In high school, I discovered aerial silks and fell in love, using my dance training to be graceful and strong in the air. After a brief stint at Mount Holyoke College, I transferred to Sarah Lawrence College to be closer to a big city, where I studied everything from dance and film production to environmental studies and fiction writing, and earned my BA in Dance and Film Production. I spent my summers training in aerial silks, and by the end of college I was teaching and directing circus camps and even performed alongside Trevor Noah as EMC on an aerial gig in the Bahamas. Straight out of college, I took a job directing a preprofessional aerial circus program under two former Cirque du Soleil performers.

After a year, I went to a yoga and meditation retreat and came back craving to be a student again. I moved to Los Angeles and threw myself into training — a two-year Meisner program alongside classes at The Actors’ Gang, whose physical style immediately clicked with my dance and aerial background. I’ve since appeared in several of the company’s plays, including METHUSALEM and THE ADDING MACHINE, and for the past five years, their Shakespeare in the Park for Families productions. I’m a lead teaching artist for the company’s youth classes, and today I serve as their Education Coordinator — bringing the company’s style to Title I and continuation schools across Los Angeles and Compton to build confidence, creativity and emotional expression in their students.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The biggest challenge has been riding the ups and downs of this business without losing myself in either one. It’s easy to treat the big TV gigs and lead roles as the whole point, like everything else is just waiting. But I’ve learned the downtime in between matters just as much, maybe more — that’s where you’re actually living your life, and art reflects life just as much as life reflects art. If I’m not fully present in those in-between moments, I miss out on a huge part of what it means to be an artist. So for me, the real challenge was never the pace of the business — it’s remembering this is a process, not a fixed destination.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I don’t come to acting from a single lane. My training combines aerial arts and dance with Meisner technique and The Actors’ Gang’s physical, character-based style, so I move comfortably between grounded, naturalistic screen work and highly physical work on stage.

What I’m most proud of is how far that range has taken me — in the same year, I might be on set for a network drama, originating a role in new theater, or performing Shakespeare with The Actors’ Gang. That same range is also what I’ve been able to give back through the company’s Education Department— meaningful work, but it comes directly out of being an actor, not instead of it.

Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
If I had to describe myself growing up, I’d say I was a curious, creative perfectionist — a combination that pushed me to work harder at everything I loved, but also made me my own toughest critic. I was deeply story-driven, and because I was surrounded by my parents’ scripts growing up, I was constantly absorbing narratives that shaped how I saw the world — especially stories about strong, independent women.

Mulan came out when I was five, and it became one of the most formative films of my childhood. She was one of the only Disney princesses who didn’t need saving — she had her own voice and fought for what she believed in, and that shaped how my friends and I saw ourselves for years afterward. In the early 2000s, my parents began writing HBO’s Iron Jawed Angels, which follows suffragists Alice Paul and Lucy Burns and their radical fight for women’s right to vote. I remember dressing up as a suffragette for a school project in fifth grade, but what really stuck with me was the idea baked into their story — that organizing, marching, and demanding to be heard is how real change gets made. Then came Ground Operations, a documentary following combat veterans finding healing and purpose through organic farming, which taught me how much people need a tangible sense of purpose — something to work toward with their own hands — to actually move forward.

By 11th grade, I organized an iMatter youth climate march in Ojai, part of a larger global mobilization happening in more than 200 cities that year, bringing together students from schools across Ojai and Ventura County, booking a student band to play in the park, and getting groups like Greenpeace and the Sierra Club to set up booths. I can draw a straight line from that day back to those movies — Mulan’s insistence on using your own voice, the suffragists’ belief that marching and organizing creates change, and the veterans in Ground Operations finding purpose through action. That march was me putting all three of those lessons into practice at once.

Looking back, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I’m drawn to complex, strong female characters, or that I care so much about emotional truth in a story. I grew up inside stories that took real issues seriously, and that shaped exactly the kind of artist I wanted to become.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anamingbostwicksinger?igsi=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
• Other: https://pro.imdb.com/mobile/name/nm7333707/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

Image Credits
Personal Photo (solo dress photo): Ericka Kreutz @erickakreutzphotos

White dress with actor: Ashley Randall @ashleyrandallphoto
Group Raising Hands: Ashley Randall @ashleyrandallphoto
Park Photo: Ashley Randall @ashleyrandallphoto
“Let’s Play”: Ashley Randall @ashleyrandallphoto

Stage photo on red/pink stage: personal
Film photo: personal