YouTube is a powerful platform that can be used to accomplish whatever the user chooses to use its far-reaching powers. Some have used it to showcase their talents and kick-started their careers in the industry of their choice. Anna Akana is one of thousands of people who have taken advantage of the platform to market themselves to the world.
She was able to build her platform and establish herself as a filmmaker, comedian and actress. YouTube sometimes has a negative reputation for the information it allows to disseminate on its platform but Anna Akana has proven to be one of the success stories of this platform.
Anna Akana’s Bio
We are the sum of our experiences and sometimes those experiences are negative. They shape us and ultimately determine who we are. For Anna Akana, she had to face a negative experience on Valentine’s Day in 2007, when she learned of her sister’s suicide. At that time, her sister Kristina was only 13, and Anna barely 18. Both girls grew up and moved from place to place due to their father’s job as an officer in the United States Marine Corps. The nomadic lifestyle allowed Anna to master several languages, including Spanish and Japanese, despite being American.
Her sister’s suicide changed Anna. However, where many people would have channeled the pain into destructive behavior, she took it and let it grow into a positive person, spreading love to others.
She decided to pursue a career as an actor after watching Margaret Cho in a Comedy Central special. According to Anna herself, watching Cho made her laugh for the first time since her sister’s death and it inspired her to give to others what Margaret Cho had given her.
At the age of 19, after a year of losing her sister, she began to pursue a career in acting. She had a rocky start and eventually transitioned to YouTube after her younger brother introduced her. She started her YouTube channel named Anna Akana in 2011 and has since become a YouTube star. She has more than 2 million subscribers and totals 260 million video views. It was named one of Rockstars Top 100 New Media Channels in 2014.
Along with her channel, she has been a strong advocate for suicide prevention. Since creating the channel for her comedy routines, she has produced several comedy shorts. One of the highlights of his YouTube career was his response to Logan Paul, another YouTube star who just recorded on a controversial recording of a corpse in Japan. His response to Logan went viral and it was cited by YouTube in the company’s official response to the incident.
His passion for media also extended to acting and directing. She started creating and producing her own short films in 2014. In her first year of directing, she released six short films which were well received by her audience on YouTube.
Her YouTube short revealed her acting abilities and since then she has appeared in a few other projects including Awkward, a TV Series, Marvel Studios’ Ant-Man, Hello, My Name is Doris and others. In 2018, she was signed by YouTube to produce on YouTube Red’s original lineup, Youth & Consequences. She was a producer and lead actress for the project.
Outside of her media activities, Anna Akana is an entrepreneur whose clothing line is called Ghost & Stars. Anna is also a published author of two books, Suicide Survivor, which she wrote as part of her mental health awareness and suicide prevention efforts. Her second book, So Many Things I Want to Tell You: Letters to My Little Sister, a diary compilation of her struggles with the loss of her sister. The book was published in 2017.
Net value
With a subscriber base of over 2 million and a total of nearly 300 million video views. Anna Akana is one of the highest earning people on YouTube. Coupled with her entrepreneurial pursuits and appearances in various movies and series, Anna has been able to amass an estimated net worth of $2 million.
Family life – sister, boyfriend
In 2018, Anna Akana came out as a bisexual woman during a speech at the Streamy Awards. However, so far Anna has only had relationships with men. She dated Brad Gage and Ray William Johnson and is currently in a relationship with George Watsky.
Anna is the first child in a family of threechildren. There is no information about her mother, but she is the daughter of William Mia Akana, a United States Marine Corps officer. Kristina, her younger sister, committed suicide at the age of 13. She has a younger brother and currently resides in Los Angeles, California.