Monica Keena

Monica Keena

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Birth name: Monica C. Keena
Date of birth: 28 May 1979
Place of birth: Brooklyn, New York, USA
Nickname: Monikers
Height: 5′ 1″ (1.55 m)

Famous Quote: “I don’t like these teeny-bopper movies that have no substance. I’d just as soon not work at all. I was offered a TV movie during the last two weeks of high school but turned it down, I didn’t want to have my diploma mailed to me, I love acting but it can be hard. People have the tendency to want to make you into a cliche, to dress a certain way, be a certain weight, look a certain way. If you don’t fit into those categories, it’s almost like you’re secondary.”

Contact Address and Autograph: Addresses and fan mail information

Monica Keena
One Entertainment
12 West 57th Street, Penthouse
New York, NY 10019, USA 

Biography:  Monica C. Keena (born May 28, 1979) is an American actress, known for her role as Abby Morgan on Dawson’s Creek. A pretty petite rising actress, Monica Keena won a following as the bitchy, trouble-making Abbie Morgan on the drama series “Dawson’s Creek” from 1998 to 1999. Originally hired as a guest performer in the show’s first season, the actress was invited back as a regular adding a much-needed spark as the nemesis of the more wholesome leads.

Keena was born in New Jersey, the daughter of Mary, a nurse, and William Keena, a financial sales manager. She was raised in Brooklyn, and has an older sister named Samantha. During her early childhood (and again at the end of high school), Monica attended Saint Ann’s School, a progressive private school in Brooklyn Heights. The New Jersey-born, Brooklyn-raised Keena enrolled at NYC’s High School for the Performing Arts and shortly thereafter landed a role in the short “Burning Love” (1993). After playing the lead in the TV biopic “A Promise Kept: The Oksana Bauil Story” (CBS, 1994), she made her feature debut in the ensemble of the hit romance “While You Were Sleeping” (1995) and then undertook her first leading role as a sexually-precocious teenager in the overblown “Ripe” (1997). 

As the title heroine in “Snow White: A Tale of Terror” (Showtime, 1997), Keena proved a lovely presence and held her own opposite Sigourney Weaver who played her evil stepmother. Although “Strike/The Hairy Bird” (1998), a period film set in the early 1960s, received only a regional release, critics especially singled her out as the beautiful aspiring performer with slightly loose morals. That character could easily be a sister to Keena’s rebellious Abby Morgan, a role she essayed with relish and wit before the character was phased out of the show. 

Monica auditioned for acceptance into LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts at the age of thirteen. Although she chose the drama department as her preference, she was accepted in both the dramatic and the vocal arts departments. Soon after starting her classes at LaGuardia, Keena played in her first role in a short film entitled Burning Love.

Keena went on to portray the character Bertha in a stage reading of Strindberg’s The Father with Al Pacino, and had her first starring role playing Snow White against Sigourney Weaver’s wicked queen in the folktale-inspired Snow White: A Tale of Terror. She has appeared in numerous television and movie projects including the TBS Original Movie First Daughter and Crime and Punishment in Suburbia which appeared at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival. Keena sparkled as pert, experimental college freshman Rachel Lindquist in writer-producer Judd Apatow’s much-undervalued NBC sit-com “Undeclared” (2001-2002), snagged a role in writer Mike White and director Jake Kasdan’s “Animal House”-throwback “Orange County” (2002), and leading her first scream-queen leading lady gig in the horror icon smackdown “Freddy Vs. Jason” (2003), followed by a leading turn in the lesser thriller “Long Distance” (2004). The actress displayed her quirky charms again in the otherwise lackluster comedy “Man of the House” (2005) opposite Tommy Lee Jones as the highly-strung, panic attack-prone cheerleader Evie. 

Monica appeared in the film While You Were Sleeping with Sandra Bullock, The Simian Line with Harry Connick Jr. and Lynn Redgrave, and Bad Girls from Valley High with Julie Benz and Jonathan Brandis in his final film role before his death in 2003 (the film was eventually released straight to DVD in 2005). In 2003 she played the heroine, Lori Campbell, in Freddy vs. Jason. In 2006 she played Celia in the film Left in Darkness.

Keena had a recurring role as Abby Morgan on Dawson’s Creek and a starring role on the short-lived Undeclared as the college student Rachel. Monica also had guest roles on series such as Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Homicide: Life on the Street, Feds, and Entourage. On the hit ABC medical drama Grey’s Anatomy, Monica appeared in an episode of the second season titled “Into You Like A Train,” in which she played Bonnie, a patient who was severely injured in a massive train accident. Monica later reappeared in the third season episode “Some Kind of Miracle,” reprising her role as Bonnie.

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