Allyson Downey

Allyson was born in Bellevue Hospital in New York City. She spent her early years in Greenwich Village, and then she began a long series of moves around the globe to England, New Mexico, California, Connecticut, back to New York City, upstate New York, and back to California. Her parents divorced when she was fourteen and while she went to an alternative boarding school in Vermont. Despite her parents' divorce, she graduated top of her class in 1980. At eighteen, she moved to Washington Heights with an older boyfriend and worked as a costume designer on rock videos. Later that year, she worked as a sometime model and dancer. At 21, Allyson moved to Los Angeles to escape an increasingly serious problem with cocaine and to live with her brother. For the next fifteen years Allyson struggled with bulimia and drug addiction. Briefly married at 23, she started the first of her two companies, this one named Downey Management for the talent management of actors, models and writers. A difficult marriage forced her to fold the company after a few years. Newly divorced, she moved back to California where she did some modeling and writing and devoted herself to New Age studies. This led to a short stint at college where she studied forensic psychology which proved to be too difficult to follow through with. At this point, Allyson started to work as an intern in treatment centers up and down the east coast doing work under the guidance of trained professionals. She then made a major move from rural Pennsylvania back to New York City where she ended up collaborating with a silent partner to form a multi-faceted production company named Multiple Choice Productions. It was then that the seed was planted for the full-length feature film, "Tribeca's G-Spot", which Allyson is writing and will be directing and starring in, in the fall of 2002. In addition, Allyson continues to act in other people's films, most recently, _Funny Valentine (2002)_ directed by 'Joel Oppenheim' and starring Anthony Michael Hall. Allyson is most excited about the book of short stories she is currently writing, entitled "Malachi's Fishbowl" or "What Do You Do When You've Done Everything You Would Never Do".