YouTube is a powerful platform that can do everything a user wants to do with its extensive capabilities. Some have used it to develop their talents and launch their career in the industry of their choice. Anna Akana is one of the thousands of people who have used the platform to sell themselves to the world.
She has managed to build her platform and establish herself as a filmmaker, comedian, and actress. YouTube sometimes has a negative reputation for the information that can be distributed on its platform, but Anna Akana has proven to be one of the platform’s success stories.
Anna Akana Bio
We are a sum of our experiences, and sometimes these experiences are negative. They shape us and ultimately determine who we are. For Anna Akana, she was forced to deal with a negative experience on Valentine’s Day 2007 when she received the news of her sister’s suicide. Her sister Kristina was just 13 years old and Anna was only 18, both daughters had grown up and moved from place to place because of their father’s work as an officer in the United States Marine Corps. The nomadic lifestyle provided Anna with the knowledge of several languages, including Spanish and Japanese, although she is American.
The suicide of her sister changed Anna. However, where many people would have directed pain into destructive behavior, she took it and allowed herself to be formed into a positive person who spread the love for others.
She decided on a career as a comedian after seeing Margaret Cho in a Comedy Central special. Anna herself said it was the first time she had laughed since her sister died when she saw Cho, and it inspired her to give others what Margaret Cho had given her.
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At the age of 19, after losing her sister for a year, she began a career as a stand-up comedian. She had a difficult start and eventually switched to YouTube after being made aware of it by her younger brother. She launched her YouTube channel called AnnaAkana in 2011 and has since become a YouTube star. She has over 2 million subscribers and a total of 260 million video views. She was named one of the New Media Rockstars Top 100 New Media Channels in 2014.
With her channel, she is a vocal advocate for suicide prevention. Since she created the channel for her comedy routines, she has produced several comedy short films. One of the highlights of her YouTube career was her reaction to Logan Paul, another YouTube star about his controversial recording of a corpse in Japan. Her response to Logan became viral, and she was quoted by YouTube in the company’s official response to the incident.
Her media passion also extended to acting and directing. In 2014, she began creating and producing her own short films. In her first year as a director, she released six short films that were well received by her YouTube audience.
In her YouTube short films, she demonstrated her acting skills, and since then she has appeared in several other projects, including Awkward, a television series, Marvel Studios’ Ant-Man, Hello, My Name is Doris, and others. In 2018, she was signed by YouTube to produce in the original program of YouTube Red, Youth & Consequences. She was the producer and lead actress for the project.
Outside of her media work, Anna Akana is an entrepreneur with a clothing line called Ghost & Stars. Anna is also the author of two books, Surviving Suicide, which she wrote as part of her efforts to raise awareness of mental health and suicide prevention. Her second book, This much I want to tell you: Letters to my little sister, a magazine compilation of her struggles with the loss of her sister. The book was published in 2017.
Family Life – Sister, Boyfriend
In 2018 Anna Akana revealed herself as a bisexual woman during a speech at the Streamy Awards. Until now, however, Anna was only in a relationship with men. She has been with Brad Gage and Ray William Johnson and currently has a relationship with George Watsky.
Anna is the first child in a family with three children. There is no information about her mother, but she is the daughter of William Mia Akana, an officer of the United States Marine Corps. Her immediately younger sister Kristina committed suicide at the age of 13. She has a younger brother and currently lives in Los Angeles, California.
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Net Worth
With a subscriber base of over 2 million and a total of almost 300 million video views, Anna Akana is, of course, one of the top earners on YouTube. Combined with her entrepreneurial efforts and her appearances in various films and shows, Anna has built up an estimated net worth of $2 million.
