Stephanie Breinholt: Mormon Actress
Stephanie Foster Breinholt is an actor and professor of acting at Brigham Young University. She is also a dialect coach and has trained in Fitzmaurice Voicework and Linklater Voice, Acting, and Design. She has directed several productions at BYU. She is an adjudicator for the Latter-day Saint Audio Visual Department. Breinholt is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
She played the role of Emma in Emma Smith: My Story (2008) and appeared in The Cokeville Miracle (2015), SAGA: Curse of the Shadow (2013), 17 Miracles (2010), The Book of Jer3miah (2009), and Spit (2009).
Brienholt is a voice and acting coach for film, broadcast, and stage. She also has coached individuals for presentations, interviews, and auditions. The list of dialects she coaches is long, including various United Kingdom, Dublin, French, Berlin German, Southern German, Polish, Russian, Italian, and various U.S. dialects.
She has appeared in commercials for such companies as Dentrix, Vemma, Microsoft, Western Family, RC Willey, Avon, Nuskin, Goodyear, Check City, and Southwest Airlines. She has also done voice-over work.
Breinholt earned her MFA degree from Brigham Young University in 1999 and her bachelor’s degree in acting in 1994. While at BYU, she won both the Irene Ryan Regional Competition (held in Cedar City, Utah) and the Irene Ryan National Acting Competition (held at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.) in 1997.
She is an assistant professor in the BFA acting program at BYU. Before returning to BYU, she was part-time faculty for one year at Utah Valley University and assistant professor, costume designer, and costume shop manager at Southern Utah University (from 2002 to 2004). She is a secondary education drama consultant for various Utah and Texas school districts. In 2013, Breinholt was selected to become vice-chair of the Irene Ryan Acting Scholarship events and was added to the regional Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF) board. She has coached BYU students at the KCACT.
Brienholt was the director for BYU's production of Our Town, which was one of eight productions invited to the 2015 KCACTF held in St. George at Dixie State University. At the festival, she was awarded the ATHE/KCACTF Innovative Teaching Award. The award was from both the Association for Theatre in Higher Education and the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, making it both a regional and national award, and the most prestigious regional award given by KCACTF. She also received the award for Outstanding Director of a Play. Our Town received thirteen national awards at the Festival, which is an unprecedented accomplishment for a BYU production.
She is married to Stephen Breinholt.
