Beau Sia

Acting

Beau Sia

Born 1976-02-06

Beau Sia is a Tony Award-winning slam poet. Born to Chinese immigrants from the Philippines in Ohio and raised in Oklahoma City, he moved to New York City for college, earning a BFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. In New York, he began performing at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, which led to his joining the 1996 Nuyorican National Poetry Slam team and being featured in the influential slam poetry documentary SlamNation. Sia is a two-time National Poetry Slam champion and the author of Well Played (2020), The Undisputed Greatest Writer of All Time (2010), and A Night Without Armor II: The Revenge (1998), a satiric response to Jewel’s poetry collection A Night Without Armor (1999). Sia’s poetry and performances often challenge Asian American stereotypes. Sia’s work has been anthologized in How to Make a Living as a Poet (2005), Poetry Slam: The Competitive Art of Performance Poetry (2000), and Poetry Nation: The North American Anthology of Fusion Poetry (1998), among other collections. He has appeared in films, including Rachel Getting Married (2008), Hitch (2005), and The Manchurian Candidate (2004), and appeared on Broadway in Def Poetry Jam (2003), for which he won a Tony Award. Sia’s work has been covered by publications including Salon.com and the New York Daily News. He has performed all over the world and facilitated workshops for Urban Word NYC and Youth Speaks. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

Acting credits

Hitch poster
6.6

Dating coach Alex 'Hitch' Hitchens mentors a bumbling client, Albert, who hopes to win the heart of the glamorous Allegra Cole. While Albert makes progress, Hitch faces his own romantic setbacks when proven techniques fail to work on Sara Melas, a tabloid reporter digging for dirt on Allegra Cole's love life. When Sara discovers Hitch's connection to Albert – now Allegra's boyfriend – it threatens to destroy both relationships.

Hitch

2005

Rachel Getting Married poster
6.3

A young woman who has been in and out from rehab for the past 10 years returns home for the weekend for her sister's wedding.

Rachel Getting Married

2008

The Manchurian Candidate poster
6.5

Years after his squad was ambushed during the Gulf War, Major Ben Marco finds himself having terrible nightmares. He begins to doubt that his fellow squad-mate Sergeant Raymond Shaw, now a vice-presidential candidate, is the hero he remembers him being. As Marco's doubts deepen, Shaw's political power grows, and, when Marco finds a mysterious implant embedded in his back, the memory of what really happened begins to return.

The Manchurian Candidate

2004

Ricki and the Flash poster
5.8

Meryl Streep stars as Ricki Rendazzo, a guitar heroine who made a world of mistakes as she followed her dreams of rock-and-roll stardom. Returning home, Ricki gets a shot at redemption and a chance to make things right as she faces the music with her family.

Ricki and the Flash

2015

Murder Party poster
5.6

A random invitation to a Halloween party leads a man into the hands of a rogue collective sparking a bloodbath of mishap, mayhem and hilarity.

Murder Party

2007

Paint It Black poster
5.8

The death of Michael leaves behind the two women he loved, his girlfriend and his mother, both of whom blame each other for his suicide. Joined by their grief, the two women are soon drawn into a twisted relationship.

Paint It Black

2016

Hits poster
4.8

A talentless teen will do anything to get on TV's "The Voice." Meanwhile, her father, a municipal worker, creates an uproar when a video of his rants at City Hall goes viral.

Hits

2014

Slam poster
6.9

Raymond Joshua, a young black performance poet, is arrested and imprisoned for a petty marijuana charge in a Washington, D.C. jail. Although the confining prison walls do little to shield him from danger, it is within those walls that Raymond establishes his identity, strength, and voice and meets a prison gang leader and a prison writing teacher, Lauren Bell. Bell inspires Raymond to use the power of creative expression to free himself from the struggles and demise of the Black male as another victim of the judicial system.

Slam

1998

No artwork available
5.2

Director Paul Devlin's fast-paced documentary follows four bards as they head to the 1996 National Poetry Slam in Portland, OR. The competition begins with the Grand Slam tournament at New York City's Nuyorican Poets Café, and then it's off to the nationals for chaps Saul Williams, Beau Sia, Mums the Schemer and Jessica Care Moore. The quartet vies against 26 other teams from across the country in a dramatic contest awash with tension, enmity and controversy.

SlamNation

1998

Brave New Voices 2010 poster
10.0

The excitement and poetry of the Brave New Voices 2010 National Slam team championships is captured in this special.

Brave New Voices 2010

2010

Goldfarb poster
NR

A team of high school idiots are hired by a suburban mad scientist to track down and destroy a rogue zombie.

Goldfarb

1998

Dreamstates poster
NR

Equal parts love story, road movie, and Americana, DREAMSTATES tells the haunting tale of two wayward souls (Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman) discovering their love for one another in their dreams and reality while touring the United States with some of the most pivotal figures of the Afro-Punk movement – Sultry, sensual, and quixotic, an underground portrait of America: haunted and hollow.

Dreamstates

2016

Behind the camera