Stephanie Lee Andujar was born on July 15, 1986, in Manhattan—New York City, the concrete mother that raises you with one hand and slaps you with the other. She came into the world in Chelsea, where you don’t get childhood innocence, you get survival instincts, and you learn fast that someone else’s dream might crush you if you don’t build your own.
Before she ever hit a stage, she was growing up in the Chelsea-Elliot Houses, those tall monoliths of public housing where the elevators smell like generations of stories no one bothers to write down. Her family moved around—Harlem, Queens, back to Manhattan—because New York families do what they must to stay afloat. Her father Hector was born in Puerto Rico; her mother, Carmen, wore the NYPD School Safety uniform, the kind of job where you break up fights before lunch and see too much of what kids carry home. Stephanie had her older sister Melanie and younger brother Hector Jr., family as shield and weight, all at once.
Some kids run wild in the projects. Some hide. Stephanie did something rarer—she watched. That’s where the acting began, long before the Beacon after-school arts program. Before she ever played a Scarecrow or ad-libbed her first comedic beat, she watched people the way a locksmith studies keys: every walk, voice, laugh, lie, fear, all stored for later.
At 12, her parents shoved her into an arts program, maybe thinking it’d keep her busy, maybe hoping it’d keep her safe. It did something better—it cracked open the door she’d been peeking through her whole life. She landed the Scarecrow at 13, and she didn’t just play him; she became the ragged, spry trickster with a heart stitched together by hope and hustle. A talent manager caught her performance and knew what he was looking at—raw fire. New York-born, unfiltered, impossible to ignore.
Then came the teacher who turned the spark into a blaze—Derrick Tyes. He pushed her toward auditions for drama schools, pushed her harder than the city itself. She auditioned for Talent Unlimited High School and got in. Suddenly she was surrounded by kids who breathed theatre, kids who weren’t scared of playbills or applause. She performed in over ten productions, building muscle in her craft the way boxers build their fists—repetition, bruises, sweat, and willingness.
Stephanie didn’t grow up rich; she grew up resourceful. While other actresses talk about “finding their voice,” Stephanie knew hers was already shaped by sirens, Spanish music, and street arguments drifting through thin apartment walls. That voice carried her to Pace University, where she earned a Business degree—because a girl from public housing knows better than to enter Hollywood blindfolded.
She was still at Pace in 2007 when she auditioned for Law & Order: SVU. She booked Latrice Munez, her first professional role. A single episode, yeah—but in the world of New York actors, getting a line on SVU means you just earned your city stripes. You survived your initiation.
Two years later, the ground shifted. She auditioned for Push, the adaptation of Sapphire’s bruised, blistering novel. Lee Daniels turned it into Precious, a film that cut open the American heart with a kitchen knife. Stephanie was cast as Rita Romero, a former heroin addict clawing her way toward a future nobody ever saved for her. It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t pretty. But it was real, and real was what she knew best.
She didn’t play Rita like a stereotype. She played her like a woman whose ribs remember every bad night and whose eyes still spark at the possibility of better ones. And the world noticed.
Then came Pariah (2011), See Girl Run, Babygirl, the kind of independent films where stories don’t get polished—they get exposed.
But the performance that made viewers stop mid-breath came in Orange Is the New Black, Season 2. She played Young Miss Rosa—the younger, fiercer version of the bank-robbing, terminally ill inmate. Stephanie didn’t imitate Barbara Rosenblat; she honored her. She brought the teenage Rosa to life with a swagger that wasn’t put on—it was lived.
Critics called her mesmerizing. Fans wanted a prequel about her. And they weren’t wrong. She stole scenes the way Miss Rosa stole cars—confidently, effortlessly, like the world was hers for the taking.
Movies kept coming—A Walk Among the Tombstones in 2014 and the quietly devastating Marjorie Prime in 2017. Through every role, Stephanie played women you swear you’ve met somewhere: the girl on the subway with headphones too loud, the cashier who gives you a look that says she’s figured you out, the friend who laughs bigger than her fear.
Most actors wait for the industry to give them permission. Stephanie cut out the middleman.
In 2016, she built Andujar Productions with her family. Not a vanity brand—a launching pad. She wrote, produced, and starred in StephA: One Woman Show, a comedy series where she played more than ten characters, all springing from the DNA of her life in New York. Five seasons of it. Think Eddie Murphy’s wild inventiveness, but filtered through Latina grit, millennial humor, and the rhythm of Chelsea streets.
She wasn’t waiting on casting directors anymore. She became her own studio, her own boss, her own machine.
People forget that before the films and TV series, she was also a stage kid—The Wiz, The Crucible, The Good Woman of Setzuan. Theatre taught her fearlessness. Film taught her precision. New York taught her survival. She blended all three into a career made of versatility, resilience, and a refusal to play small.
Stephanie Lee Andujar isn’t the type of actress who wants billboards. She wants honesty. She wants characters who bleed. She wants to build worlds the way she built herself—from scraps, applause, struggle, and stubborn, relentless talent.
She’s the girl from the projects who learned how to shape-shift into a dozen other lives.
The artist who can make you laugh and break your heart in the same breath.
The creator who turned her own life into a production company.
The actress who refuses to vanish into Hollywood noise.
Stephanie Lee Andujar didn’t just find a place in the industry.
She carved one—with her own hands, her own voice, and a fire that never learned how to dim.
