Agoura Hills actress gets 'Switched at Birth'

Vanessa Marano has no problem dealing with rejection. Perhaps that's because the Agoura Hills native and resident doesn't get rejected very often.

Her latest role is playing a high school student who learns that the hospital gave her to the wrong mother. The series, Switched at Birth, premieres at 9 p.m. Monday, June 6, on the ABC Family Network.

Marano, 18, traces her acting career back to when she was six years old and performing in children's theater under the direction of her mother, an acting coach and owner of The Stage Door Theater in Agoura Hills. That's when she developed an instant love for the stage.

"Because I started so young, I didn't fully grasp the whole rejection thing," she said. "It didn't have me thinking, 'What's wrong with me? What's wrong with my performance?  Why don't they like me?' That never crossed my mind. Instead, I just thought, 'I'm going to an audition. And even if I don't know what that is, I get to say lines and it's cool.'”

In reality, Marano gets lots of parts. She played April, Luke's daughter, in CW's Gilmore Girls. She played Francesca on HBO's The Comeback, in which her TV mom was Lisa Kudrow. She was a regular on the TV soap The Young and the Restless and has had recurring roles such hit shows as Dexter, Without a Trace and Trust Me. She portrayed a quadriplegic in The Brooke Ellison Story, a critically praised TV movie directed by Christopher Reeve. In her first film, she lent her voice to Finding Nemo.

In Switched at Birth, she co-stars as Bay Kennish, the privileged daughter of a retired professional athlete and a stay-at-home mom.  In high school chemistry, she discovers that her blood type doesn't match her parents. Further investigation shows that, as a newborn, she was switched by hospital employees. Her real mom is a single parent in a working class neighborhood.

The drama revolves around how the two families deal with the news of the switch and Bay's relationship with the other girl, Daphne Vasquez (played by Katie LeClerc), who was raised by Bay's biological mother. "Our whole show is about nature versus nurture," said Marano. "You really don't know how much  of yourself is your personality and how much is due to the parents who raised you."

"She's an amazing actress," said actress Lea Thompson (Back to the Future), who plays the mother who raised Bay. "I worked with a lot of child actors and there is always a big difference between the ones that want to do it and the ones whose parents want them to do it."

Marano said she wanted to act for as long as she can remember. "I was very fortunate that I knew what I wanted to do when I was eight," she said. "Not many people know what they want to do even when they're 30 and I'm so fortunate that I figured it out and have been able to learn so much and have so much experience in the business."

What advice would she give to others who want to be actors?

"I would say do a play, “ said the young thespian. “Do theater as much as is humanly possible. because it's not worth getting into unless you absolutely love it."