Maria Elana Bello was born April 18, 1967 in Norristown ,PA. One of 4 children, she has 2 brothers and a sister. Her father was employed in construction and her mother, a teacher who was a former school nurse. Her heritage is Polish/ Italian. She attended Villanova University in Philadelphia: majoring in Political Science. In her senior year she took an acting class as an elective and fell in love with acting. She then moved to New York City with $300.00 in her pocket & spend about six years doing the struggling-actress thing, appearing in numerous stage productions, shooting a few commercials, including her golden moment as the Amstel Light girl, and co-founding Harlem's Dream Yard Drama Project, a nonprofit arts and education program for urban kids. She made her TV debut in a guest appearance on the Fox comedy "Misery Loves Company" and demonstrated her versatility with a strong romantic turn opposite Bruce Greenwood in an episode of "Nowhere Man" (UPN). Bello made her TV-movie debut in "The Commish: In the Shadow of the Gallows" (ABC, 1995) before landing a choice role as a spy opposite Scott Bakula on the short-lived 1996 CBS action series "Mr. & Mrs. Smith". She checked into County General Hospital for three "ER" episodes as sassy pediatrician Anna Del Amico, a character which became a regular on the popular series for one season (1997-98). Bello made a strong sexy impression as a recovering junkie to whom screenwriter Jerry Stahl (Ben Stiller) recounts his past in in "Permanent Midnight" (1998).
With each successive role, Bello found a new dimension to her characters, which were typically hard-as-nails on the outside but warm and vulnerable on the inside. In 1999 she starred as a hooker with ties to Mel Gibson in "Payback" and in 2000 she made a strong impression as the sultry leather-clad owner of the bar "Coyote Ugly" and den-mother to its collection of midriff-baring bartenders. She also appeared as another vulnerable sexpot in director Bruce Paltrow's "Duets" (2000) and switched gears for the nature-oriented IMAX film "China: The Panda Adenture," in which she plays a widow following in her husband's footsteps as she studies the Chinese Panda in the 1930s (2001). Bello resurfaced again in 2002 in Paul Schrader's gritty "Auto Focus," playing the TV actress wife of 1960s "Hogan's Heroes" star Bob Crane (Greg Kinnear), who led a kinky secret sex life that led to his murder.
Maria co- founded the Dream Yard Project For Kids, a non-profit arts and education program for children in Harlem. She has travelled to Africa where she spoke to children and gathered material for a book examining the values of children from different cultures.
