Kyia Clayton’s Bio

Kyia Clayton says that if her father had had his way, she would have been born in a movie theater. One of her favorite memories is the 24 hour movie marathon of Planet of the Apes with her dad and brother at the age of six. They only lasted for about 12 hours.

Much of her youth included classic movies and ’50’s musicals while traveling the world with her family. Later, she spent the early years of her adolescence in Geneva, Switzerland. Moving back to the US, she went to North Carolina School of the Arts and graduated with a four year diploma in Acting. She then moved to Los Angeles and found herself working in Film and TV Production plus a couple of restaurants along the way. Moving on to NYC and working for an independent documentary film maker, the love of documentary film-making grew.

In 1997, she moved to Australia and lived there for the next 10 years. While in Australia she enjoyed a successful career in voice-over and audio book narration. She also worked two seasons for the Melbourne International Festival of the Arts after which she toured her one woman show “A Room Full of Monkeys” to Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra. In 2005, she successfully launched a charitable foundation for the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA).

Upon returning to the US in 2006, she began her own film production company, My Do It Productions, a name that came from a phrase her two and a half year old daughter repeated frequently that year! She has made 2 short documentaries I Am Not a Boy! and Plain Ride Penn. Plain Ride Penn received Official Selection of the 2009 Newport Beach Film Festival. Wooden Box – a documentary about Ben Sollee, is her first full length documentary that is due to be released in January 2010.

She is a published playwright, a film and TV actress, the co-founder of Fresh French Shorts Film Festival in Portland  Oregon and foremost an emerging film maker.

She lives in San Francisco with her husband, daughter, dog and cat.

She is excited by the endless number of fabulous stories out there ready to become movies.