Film and TV
"I’ve always performed—for as far back as I can remember," says Alecia. "I used to put on musical shows, improvised plays and lip-synching concerts with my brother and my cousins. Then that evolved into more public forms of performance: musicals, plays, recitals, oratorios, operas. Getting into film was really kind of a fluke. One day, I returned from a vacation abroad and my parents said a casting company had called while I was gone, wanting to know if I could appear in a film. I was only going to be home for a week, and the two days they needed me to be there were during that week. So, my parents said, ‘Sure, she can do it!’"
The movie? Award-nominated Where the Heart Is starring Natalie Portman, Ashley Judd and Stockard Channing. Not a bad way to begin a film career.
Her penchant for research and preparation imbues all her performances, beginning with the audition. "Early on, I was invited to audition for the part of a woman who was a devout Catholic suffering from severe schizophrenia," Alecia explains. "I am neither Catholic nor schizophrenic, so it was critically important that I was believable from the get-go." She began her research in a series of meetings with a Catholic priest and by delving into the history of the Church. "At the same time, I was reading reams of information about schizophrenia, its symptoms, how it might manifest itself, the medications that a schizophrenic would be prescribed, and then I met with a pharmacist and a physician to find out what side effects each medication would trigger." Alecia entered the audition waiting room in character, "and I think everyone thought I was nuts," she points out. It wasn't until the audition was over that i let out the real me. The director and producer were shocked—I loved it. It was great."
Alecia starred as vindictive friend Ellen in Time Heals All Wounds, released as a part of Mindscape Pictures' production Bent: Volume 2. In 2005, she played clueless-yet-loveable Jenn Randall in TV sitcom pilot The Six Fifty-Seven. She worked on studio-backed feature The Departed, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson, and Mel Gibson project Edge of Darkness. Alecia also worked on Hallmark TV movie Meet the Santas, starring Steve Guttenberg and Crystal Bernard. She portrayed an insolent operator in the comic Eyestar series (produced by award-winning director Kevin Anderton), a youthful shop clerk in The Sea, and a story-hungry reporter in experimental sci-fi indie feature Circuit. Commercial credits include: Hood, Novell, Krispy Kreme and the Maine Lottery.