Beata Harju is a Finnish-born and New York -raised screenwriter, actor, and filmmaker.
Beata’s first stage role was playing Casper in her middle school production of Thorbjørn Egner’s When the Robbers Came to Cardamom Town in Helsinki, Finland. She made her national theatre debut as Honey in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (dir. Piotrek Cholozdinski), followed by Jane in August: Osage County (dir. Joakim Groth) at Svenska Teatern, the National Swedish Theatre of Finland. Beata has also portrayed Lulu in Cabaret, and performed in Hip H’Opera, the Finnish National Opera’s hiphop remake of Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte.
Some of Beata’s film work include playing a Reporter in Free Skate, dir. Roope Olenius, taking on the office newcomer, Cathy, in Nicole Franklin’s debut feature Title VII, and a supporting role in the Investigation Discovery’s episodic Betrayed (dir. Yoram Astrakhan). Beata gave her voice to the Mymble in the Finnish and Swedish versions of the animation film Moomins on the Riviera, based on Tove Jansson’s famous comic books from the 1950’s. She has also starred in a Duran Duran’s music video Safe (In the heat of the moment).
Her filmmaking work include co-writing the animation feature Moomins on the Riviera, producing, co-writing and acting in the award-winning comedy short Catcalling Virgin, and writing the episode Enter the Wood Man for Cartoon Network’s Mega Man: Fully Charged -series, and Wild Things for The Unstoppable Yellow Yeti on Disney+. Her VR short film screenplay, Alone at Night, was selected to the Gap Financing Market of the 2020 Venice Film Festival as a work-in-progress. She has also developed a historical TV-show about author Sally Salminen with Onerva Pictures (in development).
Beata is now developing her own comedy show with Handle Productions and the Finnish Film Foundation, as well as a historical documentary feature Fluit with the help of EU MEDIA, a team of experts, and Handle Productions, Pictak and WindMill Films. For more of Beata’s filmmaking projects with Handle Productions, including the historical documentary feature Fluit, head over to the Handle Productions website.
Beata is a screenwriting graduate of the American Film Institute Conservatory in Los Angeles, and is repped by Trinity Artists International for acting, and Bellevue Productions and Agency North for literary work. Her undergraduate degree is in theatre, directing and history from Sarah Lawrence College, and she has spent years finessing singing, improv comedy and dance in addition to storytelling.
