Broadway and film star Lauren Ridloff will be the featured speaker for University Housing’s Latino and Disability Awareness Cultural Dinner at 5 p.m. Thursday, November 10, 2022, at 5 p.m. in the Aaron Leetch Stadium Club.
Ridloff starred as Makkari in the Marvel film, The Eternals. She is also a series regular on one of TV’s most popular shows, The Walking Dead. Ridloff was nominated for a Tony Award for lead actress in a play for her Broadway debut in Children of a Lesser God.
Sodexo LLC will cater the dinner and feature a variety of regional cuisine from Mexico. Tickets for the dinner are available online for $20. Meal plan holders may use a meal swipe to make a reservation in exchange for one meal. Tickets will be available until November 4 or until sold out. Find tickets here.
The event is made possible by University Housing, with campus partners Event Management, Dining, and Hospitality; Association of Residence Halls; and Student Access and Accommodation Services.
For more details about the event, visit Housing.IllinoisState.edu.
About Ridloff:
Lauren Ridloff began her meteoric rise as an actor just five years ago. Before that, she won the title of Miss Deaf America and was a kindergarten teacher in Manhattan for a decade.
After leaving that job to care for her two young children, she was hired in 2016 to tutor director Kenny Leon in American Sign Language as he readied the Broadway revival of Children of a Lesser God. After working together for months, Kenny and the producers concluded that Lauren was the ideal and only choice for the lead. She pulled it off with resounding success, including multiple rave reviews from the New York Times and a Tony nomination. Ridloff received a 2020 BAFTA Breakthrough award recognizing the most promising film and television stars.
Ridloff has guest starred on NBC’s New Amsterdam and The CW’s Legacies. She has supporting roles in the indies The Magnificent Meyerson’s and Sound of Metal after appearing in Todd Haynes’ Palme D’Or-nominated Cannes film, Wonderstruck. An African American and Mexican descent, the Chicago native resides with her husband and two sons in Brooklyn, New York.
