Beata Poźniak (Polish pronunciation: [bɛˈat̪a ˈpɔʑɲak]; born 30 April 1960) is a Polish-American actress, film director, poet, painter and an Earphones Award-winning narrator.

She is also a human rights activist who introduced the first bill in the history of US Congress to officially recognize International Women's Day in the United States.

Pozniak won the prestigious Voice Arts Award in the "Outstanding Video Game Character - Best Performance" category for her role of Skarlet, the Blood Queen in Mortal Kombat 11 starring alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone.

She eventually passed her entrance exam to the National Film School in Łódź PWSFTViT with the highest score in the country, and received a Master's of Fine Arts degree with High Honors at age 22.

She is a member of the European Film Academy (EFA) Poźniak was discovered by the U.S. audiences when Oliver Stone cast her in JFK as Marina Oswald.

In the television series Melrose Place, she created a ground-breaking character, Dr. Katya Fielding, a "straight" woman and mother who decides to marry a gay man - the role that is still very much talked about, making Poźniak one of the show's most popular former cast members.

Her other diverse roles include Masha in Mad About You, Raisa on The Drew Carey Show and Tambor, the Japanese nanny in Oliver Stone's Wild Palms miniseries.

In the CBS movie of the week A Mother's Gift, she was seen as a character that aged thirty years, whereas in a World War II drama entitled Miriam she played a Catholic woman who risks her life to save a Jewish girl from the Nazis.

Poźniak narrated the bestseller, The Winter Palace: A Novel of Catherine the Great,[4] a 19-hour audiobook[5] for Random House, where she made use of her European background in bringing to life the 78 characters and their colorful accents.

As a producer and narrator she takes on "Libretto for the Desert – Poetry Dedicated to the Victims of Genocide and War" a project that acknowledges the universality of loss, persecution, and intolerance.

Poźniak received the 2019 Earphones Award[8] for the best read audiobook Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead written by Nobel Prize Winner Olga Tokarczuk.

She narrated the 2020 novel Light in Hidden Places by Sharon Cameron, based on the true story of Stefania Podgorska, a Polish Catholic teenager who hid 13 Jewish persons during World War 2.

Feeney LA Weekly: "the multitalented Pozniak rapidly intercuts news footage of violence with live models and her own sensual sculptures to express a fierce moral sense."