Tiffany Michelle

Tiffany Michelle is a television host, actress and producer, born and raised in Los Angeles, California. She is internationally known for her professional poker feats, and gained fame at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas when she broke the record for the largest field ever beat by a woman in live poker tournament history; finishing 17th out of 6,844 players for a payday of $334,534. Tiffany was later named one of the Top 10 Most Fascinating People in Poker (2008), one of Maxim's Top 20 Hottest Celebrity Poker Players (2010, 2012) and remained on the list of Top 10 Female Poker Money Earners Under 30, for quite some time. In 2009, Tiffany once again defied the odds when she competed as the only all-female team on the Emmy Award-winning (15th) season of The Amazing Race (2001), alongside her best friend and fellow female poker pro, Maria Ho. The team finished three legs shy of the finish line. A Los Angeles native, Tiffany caught the acting bug at an early age and began performing theatre at age 10. She earned back-to-back "Best Young Performer" nominations for her starring roles in musical adaptations of "Alice in Wonderland" and "Beauty and The Beast". During her teen years she competed in regional and national pageants, winning the titles of Miss Teen Newhall, Miss Teen Santa Clarita Valley, and was a finalist in the Miss Teenage California pageant, where she was voted Miss Teenage Congeniality by her 200+ peers. After studying theatre at College of the Canyons (where she also competed as a the captain of the Speech & Debate team; winning national accolades for her performances and original work in the Dramatic Interpretation and Prose Interpretation categories) she completed programs with esteemed professors at UCLA's School of Theatre Film and Television, before continuing tutelage at the Aaron Speiser Acting Studio. When Tiffany made the transition from stage to screen, she booked several small roles in episodic television, including ER (1994), Gilmore Girls (2000), and Nip/Tuck (2003). One of her most notable and dramatic performances came in 2005, when she starred, opposite One Life to Live (1968)'s David Fumero, in the award-winning independent film, Carrie's Choice (2005), based on a true story. The following year, she landed a lead role in the horror film, The Thirst: Blood War (2008), starring Jason Connery. The production was later halted and put on hold until 2008, when it was recast. It was in between auditions that Tiffany fell into player poker. While frequenting Hollywood house games with fellow actor friends, she discovered a natural knack for the game and soon proceeded to book jobs as TV host and poker reporter. In 2006, she was heard nationwide on Sirius Satellite Radio, covering the World Series of Poker's first ever live radio broadcast. In 2007, she became the first female ever hired as an on-camera host for PokerNews, and traveled the poker circuit internationally to provide tournament updates, player interviews and red carpet coverage for poker tournaments and events on the European Poker Tour, World Poker Tour and World Series of Poker. After a poker-induced acting sabbatical, Tiffany returned to the screen in 2012, theatrically, with guest starring roles on Days of Our Lives (1965), DeVanity (2011) and she wrote, produced and starring in the short film Breaking Up and Away (2013). On the heels of its first Daytime Emmy nomination, Tiffany returned to DeVanity (2011) as a series-regular in 2014, playing the resident villainess, Scarlett (Kane) DeVanity on the show's final season. Tiffany resides in Los Angeles, California, and refuses to pigeon hole herself. She loves collaborating, producing and working in any creative capacity - as an actor, host, writer, producer, and musician/songwriter, while still finding time to travel the world for poker tournaments, appearances and motivational speaking.