Miles Szanto’s Mother was “Joan of Narc”

Second Chances

A working actor since age 8, Miles Szanto saw two sides of life—the privileged life of a working actor and the concrete walls of jail. His parents were addicted, then clean, then addicted, trafficking, in prison…he felt ashamed of his blood and felt unsafe, but acting saved him, and keeps saving him. The greatest lesson he is learning now is to not let external forces validate how he feels about himself; that he has worth no matter what happened in the past or what he is working on.

Miles has been working professionally as an actor since he was a child. He completed extensive training at the Australian Theatre for Young People, the American Musical and Dramatic Academy on a scholarship, Steppenwolf Theater West and was later invited to attend David Mamet & William H Macy’s prestigious Atlantic Acting School in New York City.

He has appeared in the stage production and the Australian cast record of The Wizard of Oz and then went on to perform in the Sam Mendes production of Oliver The Musical(Cameron Macintosh Productions). In 2011 Miles acted as Eliot in Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton’s Sydney Theatre Company production of Tusk Tusk and later as Melochior Gabor in the Oregon tour of Spring Awakening the Musical.

He has appeared in such Australian TV series as; Snobs, award winning cable drama Love My Way(Seasons 2 & 3), European hit & AFI award winning The Elephant Princess(Seasons 1 & 2), Dead Girls Detective Agency(pilot) and the FX series Married. He has appeared as presenter on K-Zone TV, Studio Disney and AMTV on Disney.

His film credits include Drowning(which screened at the Cannes Film Festival), Blue Monday(which he co-wrote with director Craig Boreham), Ostia: La Notte Finale, Bruno and Earlene Go To Vegas(for which he won Best Performance at the 2014 Transgender Film Festival), Western Religion, Electric Mirrors, Unravel and Teenage Kicks. For his role in Teenage Kicks, Miles was presented with the 2017 Iris Prize for Best Actor in a feature film, and award that is lovingly referred to as the gay Oscars. Miles is also becoming an accomplished filmmaker and in 2016 he wrote and directed the Huffington Post distributed docu-series ‘Facing Addiction; Across America”.