Katana Martinez (born Jeoanne April Justiniani) is a Filipino-American actress and musician. She was born and raised in the Philippines until she was nine years old. Her mother, Ana Lopez is a caregiver and a gallery artist who immigrated from the Philippines to New York during the Marcos revolution in the 1980's. Her parents separated shortly after she was born due to her father's drug addiction. This left her and her brother under the care of her maternal grandmother. She is the granddaughter of Cecilia Del Castillo-Lopez, a prominent educator and owner for four private schools in Bacolod City. Martinez attended her grandmother's elementary school,Jack and Jill, a preparatory school locally famed for its strict but effective approach to early learning. Katana's childhood was full of exposure to dance, music, fashion, theater arts and sports in which she actively participated and excelled. At age five, she enrolled in ballet, jazz and modern dance until she was eight years old. She also had private lessons in swimming, piano and karate. She was often afraid to focus on just one field and as a result, she spent an average of two years training for various skills and would move on to another. At an early age, she embraced her social status and enjoyed the attention she received from entering school pageants, declamation, folk dance and literary competitions. When she was nine, she joined her mother and brother in Alexandria, Virginia. The sudden change of lifestyle moving to the United States and living with an estranged mother she did not grow up with caused a drastic change to her outlook in life. She focused more on academics and had sat aside any interests in dance and theater. She then discovered a love for music when she auditioned for and joined her school orchestra as a double bass player. She was the shortest in height, and was the only female bass player in her class. She also revisited playing the piano and learned to play the violin. She attended high school at St. Scholastica's Academy where she played Calypso in the school's local Thespian Club production. She then attended the University of St. La Salle and finished with a degree in Hospitality Management, major in Business and Accountacy. Within this period she composed two original tracks on the violin for a college play "Sa Balay Ni Mamang" (House of Mother), which received high praise from the community and one of the Philippine's well-known directors, Peque Gallaga. She has worked as an English tutor for Koreans, an accounting assistant, accounting clerk, a restaurant manager, food server, hostess, promotion model, and independent musician (having collaborated events with DJ Quest of the Bulletproof Scratch Hamsters/Space Travellerz and DJ Clyde Harris) before pursuing a career in acting. Given her history and close line of experience in entertainment, Katana did not develop a serious interest in film until early 2012 after having landed a small feature doing background work, something she signed up for out of curiosity. Her first few projects include Last Vegas, The Hangover 3, Inner Demons, and Infected, all due for release in 2013. She claims to have completely fallen in love with acting and journeys through it with passion. She has since dedicated most of her time learning and re-learning various methods, researching, and constantly commuting between Las Vegas and Los Angeles for projects. Martinez is also a student in Wu Shu Kung Fu, where she hopes to develop skills for stunt choreography in martial arts films in the near future. Her genres of interest in film include horror/thriller, action and comedy.
