Julianna was born in Reno, Nevada to working class parents. Her parents divorced when she was very young and she spent her formative years raised by her single, working mother who often worked several jobs just to make ends meet. Although it was financially impossible, Julianna knew she wanted to go to college. She was accepted to UCSB (originally as a pre-med student but she later changed majors after a successful audition to the prestigious BFA acting program at the end of her freshman year) and paid for her own tuition by working every morning as a personal trainer. She was the first in her family to go to and graduate from college. Her foray into Hollywood came that first year of college when a casting director saw her in a play and thought she'd make the perfect Andorian space cadet in Star Trek. She booked the role and was able to get her SAG card, work side by side with the original Star Trek cast and she made enough money to send herself to school abroad in London for a summer to study Shakespeare. She has been the lead in a few award winning independent feature films like the multi-award winning zombie rom-com Aaah Zombies!, The Funeral Guest and Nun (all 3 films available to watch on Amazon). For her role of Emily in The Funeral Guest she won a best actress award from LA Indie Film Fest and she was nominated for a best actress award at Hoboken International Film Fest for her role of Sister Gracie Rose in Nun. Frustrated by a lack of acting work and looking to find more avenues for story telling, Julianna redirected her sights from acting to directing. She had her directorial film debut with The Party (2019) that premiered at Screamfest. Julianna got the directing bug went on to direct two more shorts in 2019 (Hurricane Forecast and Slice). Hurricane Forecast (which she also stars in) won the Jury Prize for best drama short at Long Beach International Film Fest in New York in December 2020. During 2020 she wrote and directed two more shorts, Misophonia and For Worse. She was hired to direct Play Me Like That in April 2021 and that film was recently an official selection at LA Shorts International (an Academy Award qualifying film festival). In 2022 she was hired to write and direct a horror film about The Whaley House in San Diego. That film will be released in summer/fall of 2022. She has a documentary project in the works about the real life story of Kate Morgan who died suspiciously at the Hotel Del Coronado on Thanksgiving in 1892.