Daniela Ruah
Daniela Sofia Korn Ruah (
i; born December 2, 1983) is a Portuguese-American actress best known for playing NCIS Special Agent Kensi Blye in the CBS police procedural series NCIS: Los Angeles.
Early life and family
Ruah was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Portuguese citizens Dr. Moisés Carlos Bentes Ruah and his wife, Katharina Lia Azancot Korn. Her father was a resident in Otolaryngology (Ear, Nose, and Throat) in the Boston University–Tufts University program. When Ruah was five years old, her father completed his residency and the family returned to Portugal, where her parents divorced. She attended an international, English-medium school.
Ruah's father is from a prominent Portuguese Sephardic Jewish family. Ruah's maternal grandfather was an Ashkenazi Jew who was born in 1922 in what is now Wrocław, Poland. Ruah's maternal grandmother, Vera, was born in Lisbon, Portugal; Vera's father (Ruah's great-grandfather) was of Sephardic Jewish and Spanish ancestry, and Vera's mother (Ruah's great-grandmother) was a Ukrainian Ashkenazi Jew from Odessa. She is the great-grand niece of the captain Artur Carlos de Barros Basto. She also has distant ancestors from São Tomé and Príncipe.
