Sumalee Montano is an American actress and film producer. Originally, she worked as an investment bank analyst in New York City and Hong Kong before starting her acting career.

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Sumalee Montano
Montano at the 2019 WonderCon
Education	Harvard University (AB)
Occupations	Actress filmmaker
Years active	1999–present
Known for	Space Channel 5 ER Transformers: Prime
Spouse	Craig Zimmerman ​ ​ (m. 2011)​
Website	sumalee.com

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For TV and film, Montano has appeared on Close to Home, Days of Our Lives, Nashville, Scandal, The Young and the Restless, This Is Us and Veep. As a voice actress, she has provided the voices of Pudding in Space Channel 5 and its sequel, Arcee on Transformers: Prime, Cali in the Skylanders series, Katana on Beware the Batman, the President in Saints Row IV, the female Inquisitor in Dragon Age: Inquisition, and Yuna in Ghost of Tsushima. She has also guest starred as Nila on the web series Critical Role.

She resides and works in Los Angeles.

Montano is of Filipino^[1] and Thai descent and grew up mostly in the United States, but also spent a few years in Bangkok, Thailand. During her high school career, she began acting as an extracurricular activity.^[2] Her great-uncle is Filipino actor and writer Severino Montano.^[3]

She graduated from Harvard University in 1993 and is a U.S. Fulbright scholar.^[4] After graduation, she worked as an investment banking analyst for Morgan Stanley for a few years.^[5] After realizing investment banking wasn't something she was passionate about, Montano quit and went backpacking through Africa before realizing she wanted to pursue acting professionally.^[6]

Montano has taken on a variety of different roles, both live-action and voice-over. She is talented in using many different accents, including Chinese, Filipino, British, Southern, Thai, Vietnamese, Eastern European and Japanese.^[7] Her first voice acting role was as Pudding in the 1999 music-rhythm game, Space Channel 5. Her first major acting role was playing the nurse Duvata Mahal for three seasons of the TV show ER.^[6]

In 2021, Sumalee Montano gained acclaim for her role as Inoue Sato in the Peacock TV series The Lost Symbol.^[8] Following her portrayal as Sato, she had also appeared in the 2021 animated Disney series The Ghost and Molly McGee, voicing Sharon McGee, the titular character's mother, and Grandma Nin.