Lana Parrilla

Lana Parrilla is an American actress who is widely recognized for her main role as Mayor Regina Mills, also known as the Evil Queen, on the ABC fantasy drama series Once Upon a Time. Throughout her career, she has maintained a prominent presence on television, appearing in regular and recurring roles across major series such as Spin City, 24, Boomtown, and Why Women Kill.

Born on July 15, 1977, in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, Parrilla was raised in Boerum Hill. Her mother, Dolores Dee Azzara, has Sicilian roots, while her father, Sam Parrilla, was a Puerto Rico-born baseball player who played a season with the Philadelphia Phillies. She is also the niece of Broadway and television actress Candice Azzara. Parrilla graduated from Fort Hamilton High School in Bay Ridge and later pursued acting studies at the Beverly Hills Playhouse in Los Angeles.

Parrilla began her professional acting career in 1999 with a debut on the sitcom Grown Ups, followed by appearances in feature films including Very Mean Men, Spiders, and Frozen Stars. In 2000, she joined the fifth season of the ABC comedy Spin City as Angie Ordonez. She subsequently starred in the crime series Boomtown as a paramedic, earning an Imagen Award for Best Supporting Actress before her character was transitioned into a police academy rookie. During the early 2000s, she guest-starred on dramas like JAG, Six Feet Under, and NYPD Blue, and played CTU agent Sarah Gavin during the fourth season of 24.

Between 2006 and 2010, Parrilla led several prime-time television series that each ran for a single season, including NBC's summer show Windfall, CBS's Swingtown, and the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced medical drama Miami Medical, in which she portrayed Dr. Eva Zambrano. Her additional screen credits during this era include a guest appearance as Greta in two episodes of Lost, a starring role in the Lifetime television movie The Double Life of Eleanor Kendall, and guest roles on Covert Affairs, Medium, The Defenders, and Chase.

Parrilla reached a career milestone in 2011 when she was cast in Once Upon a Time. Her portrayal of the show's primary antagonist and mayor received widespread critical praise and industry recognition. For her performance across the show's seven-season run ending in 2018, Parrilla won a 2012 ALMA Award for Outstanding TV Actress—Drama and a TV Guide Award for Favorite Villain, in addition to receiving a Saturn Award nomination.

In her subsequent work, Parrilla joined the main cast of Why Women Kill for its second season in 2021, playing Rita Castillo. That same year, she collaborated with artist Glovibes on the song release "It's Over Now." She was later cast in the Netflix legal drama series The Lincoln Lawyer and the sci-fi thriller film Atlas. Outside of acting, Parrilla was married to Alfredo Di Blasio from 2014 to 2019, and in 2020 she launched an online clothing line named Keep It Regal.