Virginia Brissac (June 11, 1883 – July 26, 1979) was a popular American stage actress who headlined theatre companies from Vancouver to San Diego during the heyday of West Coast Stock in the early 1900s.

An ingénue and leading lady known for her natural style and charm on stage, Brissac played with equal success in both comedies and dramas and went on to have a long second career as a character actress in film and television.

She was introduced to the theatre as a young girl by her aunt and uncle, New York actress Mary Shaw and husband Norline Brissac, who was the stage manager for Sarah Bernhardt on her early tours in San Francisco and other American cities.

As Brissac's interest in theatre grew, so did her collection of autographs, which eventually included signed daguerreotypes, not only of Bernardt, but of Eleonora Duse, Richard Mansfield, Henry Irving, and many other popular actors of the day.

But here it is and I am waiting for your autograph.In India at the time, Kipling eventually obliged her with his autograph and, acknowledging her letter in his reply, included these lines from his poem In the Neolithic Age: But my Totem saw the shame; from his ridgepole-shrine he came, And he told me in a vision of the night: – 'There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, And every single one of them is right!

[11][12][13] After touring with Roberts' company, Brissac returned to the Alcazar, appearing in June 1904 with actor White Whittlesey in Soldier of Fortune, and again that August in Clyde Fitch's Nathan Hale.

[16][17] The following February, she was declared a hit by The Los Angeles Herald for her portrayal of Tweeny in Paul Kester's Sweet Nell of Old Drury at the Mason Opera House,[18] certifying her as a darling of the West Coast Stock circuit at the age of twenty-two.

[19][20] Early in 1907, Brissac became pregnant and, awaiting the birth of her child, joined the Jessie Shirley Company, a local troupe in residence at the Auditorium Theatre in Spokane, appearing in productions of Lady Windermere’s Fan, A Bachelor’s Housekeeper, A Man of Her Choice, The Two Orphans and The Triumph of Betty.

That December, she joined the Curtiss Comedy Company at Spokane's Columbia Theatre, playing leading roles in The Life of an Actress, In the Palace of the King, The Transgressors, By Right of Sword, Ten Nights in a Bar-Room, Deadwood Dick's Last Shot, The Banker, the Thief and the Girl, Old Heidelberg and The Land of Cotton.

[5] In the middle of their record-breaking four-year residency at the Strand Theatre, Wray was hired to direct films for Thomas H. Ince at the newly formed Ince/MGM Studios and began spending more time in Los Angeles than in San Diego.

Some time after the release of his silent film adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie in 1923, John Wray began a long affair with screenwriter Josephine McLaughlin (aka Bradley King), and Brissac divorced him in May 1927.

[10] During the years she lived with John Wray in Culver City, Brissac became friends with the Laemmle family and many of the people working with them and Thomas Ince, among them actress Carole Lombard and entertainer Russ Columbo.

She was a contemporary of Theda Bara, Isadora Duncan, and Eleanor Roosevelt, and in a 1919 publicity stunt, she became the first air parcel post package in the United States, flown from San Diego to Los Angeles in a two-seater single engine plane wearing a helmet covered with postage stamps.