Janina Gavankar Biography
Janina Gavankar born Janina Zione Gavankar is an American actress and musician. She is also trained as a vocalist, pianist and orchestral percussionist. She majored in Theatre Performance at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Her roles include Papi, a lesbian lothario in The L Word; a police officer on The Gates; Leigh Turner, Ms. Dewey, the personification of a Microsoft branded search engine who commented on the user’s searches; Shiva, the namesake of the sought-after trophy on The League; shapeshifter Luna Garza on HBO’s True Blood; McKenna Hall on The CW’s Arrow; and Meredith Bose on NBC’s The Mysteries of Laura. Gavankar also portrayed Diana Thomas on FOX’s supernatural drama Sleepy Hollow.
Janina Gavankar Age
Janina Gavankar Height
She stands at a height of 1.7 m.
Janina Gavankar Net Worth
Gavankar has an estimated net worth of $500 thousand dollars.Janina Gavankar photo
Janina Gavankar Boyfriend
was in a relationship with the CEO of DeviantArt, Angelo Sotira beginning in the year 2004. The couple ended their relationship in 2010, after many years together. In 2012, there were rumors that she was dating music mogul, Simon Cowell after the two posted a series of flirtatious tweets. Later, the two were seen stepping out of Los Angeles’ famous Cecconi restaurant, however, this supposed relationship was never confirmed or denied.
In 2018, the actress was then rumored to be dating Ben Affleck an A-list actor, however, like most rumors, this fizzled out after a short while.
Janina Gavankar Parents
Gavankar was born to Peter Ganesh Gavankar, an engineer from Mumbai, who first traveled to the U.S. to pursue a master’s degree, and Mohra Gavankar, from Pune, Maharashtra, who also emigrated to the U.S. from India. Gavankar’s mother is half-Indian and half-Dutch.
Janina Gavankar Career
Gavankar has acted in theatre, television, film and online. Gavankar’s most notable roles include Iden Versio, canon Star Wars character and protagonist of Star Wars: Battlefront II, lesbian lothario Papi in The L Word; shapeshifter Luna Garza in True Blood, Ms. Dewey, the personification of a Microsoft live search engine; and Shiva, the namesake of the sought after trophy on The League. She regularly appears in Funny or Die shorts.
She joined the cast of The L Word in 2006 as a series regular and shot all of the clips used for Ms. Dewey. She landed a lead in CW pilot Dash 4 Cash in 2007. Gavankar appeared in TV series Stargate Atlantis in 2008, Grey’s Anatomy and NCIS, My Boys and Factory. She appeared in the 2009 TV shows The Cleaner, Dollhouse, Three Rivers and The League, as well as indie movies Men, Interrupted, Indian Gangster, and Quantum Quest: A Cassini Space Odyssey. She played the voice of Nikki in Quantum Quest. Gavankar landed a lead role in The Gates, since cancelled, on ABC. She appears on CW’s Arrow as a vice squad police officer and former flame to Oliver Queen.
Gavankar is an admitted gamer and has appeared on, as well as co-hosted, G4 TV’s Attack of the Show!, Epileptic Gaming’s Up All Night, where she helped review Burnout Paradise, Rock Band and Army of Two. Gavankar became a series regular in 2011 in HBO’s True Blood as a public school teacher and shapeshifter, Luna Garza, who gets romantically involved with one of the main characters of the series.
Her indie movie, Satellite of Love, premiered in 2012, at the Dallas International Film Festival and her 2012 indie I’m Afraid of Virginia Wolf is currently in post-production. On December 20, 2012, she was the last person interviewed for the now cancelled Attack of the Show! which aired on G4 TV. Gavankar landed a role on August 3, 2013 as a witch named Qetsiyah in the fifth season of The Vampire Diaries. She guest starred in the third season of Husbands.
Gavankar starred as Amita in the 2014 video game, Far Cry 4. From 2014 to 2016, she also played Detective Meredith Bose on The Mysteries of Laura. Gavankar starred as Iden Versio, the main character in the campaign mode of the 2017 Electronic Arts video game Star Wars Battlefront II. She has two films released in 2018. Blindspotting premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and The Vanishing of Sidney Hall wasdistributed by A24.
Janina Gavankar Music
She returned to music with a cover of Kanye West’s “Love Lockdown”. Her former all female singing group, Endera, was signed to Cash Money Records Universal Records. Gavankar collaborated on a project for a song called “Tell Me What” in India with Pratichee Mohapatra of Viva, Deep and Navraaz. Gavankar has had songs licensed to movies and television and has sung and played marimba on film scores. She was featured in Russian artist Ella Leya’s music video for “Wish I Could”, in the music video by San Francisco-based band Recliner for their single “Float Away”, as well as the music video for Manu Narayan’s band Darunam.
In August 2012, Gavankar released the single for her upcoming EP, entitled Waiting for Godot and in November, Billboard premiered the official music video. The film went on to win numerous film festival awards. While in high school, she auditioned for the front ensemble of the Phantom Regiment Drum and Bugle Corps of Rockford, Illinois. Before hearing whether she had made the corps, Gavankar was accepted for the Yale School of Drama’s summer camp and went there. “I fell in love with drum corps when I was 13 years old”, Gavankar has stated and remains a strong fan of the activity.
When Gavankar heard the Martin Garrix/Usher collaboration, “Don’t Look Down”, she had the idea of performing it as marching music. With assistance from Drum Corps International, Gavankar contacted the Jersey Surf Drum and Bugle Corps and arranger Colin Bell. She went into the studios in New York with fifty members of Jersey Surf and recorded the music video “Don’t Look Down- #JustAddDrumCorps Edition” that was released in April 2015. Gavankar performed a percussion duet at Carnegie Hall on May 20, 2015, with Questlove for the Best Buddies charity benefit.
Janina Gavankar Technology
In 2006, Gavankar was the first actress to use Twitter, signing up on Richard Branson’s computer on Necker Island. She was the personification of Microsoft’s interactive search engine Ms. Dewey. Gavankar created a free template for actors and artists in 2011 to help them control their online presence and in 2012, spoke at the Suits and Spooks Conference about how she discovered a solution for data challenges faced by actors through the use of open source tools.
Gavankar launched a private discussion forum for members of the games industry in 2017. She produced the first narrative film in 2018 to use the ARRI Alexa LF. Gavankar is a first round investor in ClassPass.
Note: This biography is based on the available information as of 2023, and real-time updates or developments are being updated by our editorial team.