Ramona Milano

Training in Toronto

Ramona Milano began her technical training at the Etobicoke School of the Arts. Toronto was the center of Canada's film industry, and she took advantage of that environment to refine a direct style that would serve her years later in commercial television.

But her face became familiar to general audiences in 1994. That year she joined the cast of Due South, a series that mixed comedy and crime with a very distinctive tone.

She played Francesca Vescio for five years.

On that production, she shared the screen with Paul Gross and showed she could keep up the comedic rhythm amid police plotlines. The series had a major international run, which opened doors for her in the United States without leaving her home country.

The Teen Refuge

In 2001, she landed the project that kept her on screen for nearly a decade. She stepped into the role of Audra Torres in Degrassi: The Next Generation, one of the longest-running franchises in North American television.

Her character was the mother of Manny Santos.

The series filmed hundreds of episodes, and Milano appeared in 33 of them between 2001 and 2008. She was one of the most recurring adult figures in the teen drama, and her presence brought stability to the most tense family storylines of the show.

She certainly managed the move from supporting actress to a familiar face on national television. In Canada, the market is small, and jumping from a cult series to a mass hit requires very precise networking.

Voice Work and New Horizons

Outside of live-action work, Milano did a lot of voice acting. In 2011, she took part in the animated series Super Why!, voicing several supporting characters in a production aimed at the educational market.

She also recorded for The Doodlebops.

In 2018, she appeared in an episode of The Bold Type directed by Victor Nelli Jr. It was a technical role meant to give the leads someone to play off in one of the storylines in season two.

Before turning fifty, she had already worked on some of the most important film sets in Ontario.

In 2021, she joined the cast of Private Eyes as Detective Farina. It was a return to the procedural genre that brought her so much success in the nineties, but with a far more mature and understated approach.

But her career hasn't been all police drama.

The actress maintains her residence in Toronto and remains involved in the Canadian industry by training new talent. In 2023, her projects focused on collaborations for cable television and casting consulting.

She closed the year with three different credits in mid-budget productions shot entirely in Canada.