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Published: Feb. 4, 2023, 12:01 a.m.

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Tina Alexis Allen is an actor, playwright and author. She grew up the youngest of 13 in a Catholic family in Chevy Chase Maryland. After accepting a basketball scholarship to the University of Maryland, she earned an MBA in marketing and moved to New York, where she spent weekends at Broadway shows and after some soul searching started to pursue acting.

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Her break out role was in the 2016 WGN hit series Outsiders, a clash-of-cultures drama rooted in coal mining Kentucky. Now, she is known for playing a diversity of roles, and were nominated for a GLAAD award for her work in The Break-Up Notebook. Celebrated acting coach Susan Batson called her \\u201ca true chameleon.\\u201d She wrote and performed the critically acclaimed solo show, Secrets of a Holy Father in which she played her own father, Sir John, an Englishman who had been knighted by the Pope. The play explores betrayal, redemption and forgiveness through her father\\u2019s secretive double life.

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She is also co-founder of Gina Raphaela Jewelry, which turns deconstructed bullets into daring necklaces, rings and bracelets. The company donates proceeds to non-profit organizations that stand for peace.

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Lastly, her book, Hiding Out: A Memoir of Drugs, Deception and Double Lives, builds on the story of her play, and further unravels the relationship with her formidable father, this time from her point of view. The book hinges on a moment in which a secret she\'d harbored for years is revealed to her father; that she liked girls. But, instead of dragging her to a priest, her father shockingly says that he too, is gay. Through wild, clandestine escapades, her discover that this is not Sir John\\u2019s only significant deception.

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The Washington Post said of the book, that she packaged grit and grime into glistening prose and that her twisted mystery is a \\u2018can\\u2019t-put-down\\u2019 read. And of the book, Tina herself said, \\u201cthere is no shame in telling the truth.\\u201d

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