ACTOR BIO

Donna Anita Nikolaisen is an Irish actor and voice over artist. Her stage credits include the lead role of ‘Judith Noone’ in the Irish premiere of award-winning play Belfast Girls, by Jaki McCarrick. Other roles of note include ‘Silk Campbell’ in No Irish No Blacks No Dogs, ‘Rima’ in Talking to Terrorists, ‘Bertha Mason’ in Jane Eyre at The Gate and ‘The Bacchae Chorus’ in The Bacchae of Baghdad at The Abbey. Donna trained at The Focus Theatre, Bel Canto School of Voice and Montfort School of Performing Arts. 

Her TV credits include ‘Lucy’ in RTE’s The South Westerlies, ‘Francis Frond’ in cBBC’s Nova Jones and roles in Conversations with Friends, Blood and Kin. Her breakthrough TV role came as Zambian nurse ‘Ama Chisenga’, whom she played for five years on Ireland’s National Soap Drama Fair City (RTE). 

Donna’s film credits include the role of ‘Grace Ture’ in Sweetness in the Belly, ‘Paige Monaghan’ in Hallmark’s Christmas at Castle Hart and ‘Ali’ in award-winning short film QED, where she won Best Supporting Actor at the Dublin Underground Cinema Festival 2018. 

She is represented by Byron’s Management. 

VOICE BIO

Donna Anita Nikolaisen is an Irish voice over artist who has voiced roles for animation, video games, audiobooks, radio plays and commercials. She voices the role of ‘Mum’ in Cartoon Saloon’s pre-school animation ‘Silly Sundays’, currently viewable on the RTE Player and Cartoonito worldwide. Her other credits include the audiobook narration of award winning novel ‘Strange Flowers’, crime thriller ‘The Coincidence’ and biography ‘Reclaiming’, where she has received top reviews on Audible. Donna narrates the TV documentaries: ‘The Story of Water’ (Virgin Media) and ‘Ireland’s Refugee Hotel’ (BBC/RTE). Donna was the voice of a major high street bank for a number of years and continues to voice TV and radio commercials for top clients. As a voice over artist she is represented by Voicebank in Ireland and the UK.

BACKGROUND
Born in Dublin, Donna is of Irish Caribbean heritage. Brought up in Cork from the age of three by her adopted parents, Anita and Kurt Nikolaisen, she comes from a wonderfully diverse family. From an early age the stage called to her. Her debut performance was a showcase for The Montfort School of Performing Arts at the famous Cork Cat Club. After graduating from UCC with a BSc Business Information Systems, she moved to Dublin and worked in the IT sector, which lead her to set up Visual Aspects Web Design Studio. Around that time she also began training her voice at Bel Canto School of Voice and attending The Focus Theatre Stanislavsky Studio. Early roles include Bloody Mary in The Pioneer Society’s South Pacific at The Helix and Margaret in Much Ado About Nothing with The Dublin Shakespeare Society at Theatre@36. From this springboard she began booking roles in Theatre, TV, Film. She has a love for lyrics and melody and has recorded two albums to date called ‘Lore Bealtaine’ and ‘Samhain Song’, which can be found on her music page.