When she's not Hawking cell phones,
she's been known to turn into some unforgettable furry creatures
and pop up in hilarious comedies.
Here's the story of Lily Adams,
AKA Melana Weintraub. Melania Vintrub's first big break came in
1995 at the age of 8,
when she appeared on three episodes of the classic medical
drama ER.
That led to a gig on the popular daytime soap
opera Days of Our Lives,
in which she played a young version of Kristen Blake,
who would later become Kristen Demera.
The character of Kristen is one of the show's main
villains,
as Vintrub recalled to Esquire in 2015.
It was really weird. I actually don't have tons of
memories from it.
I played someone in a flashback version.
I ended up not auditioning for that.
They just called me after they saw me on ER
to do that.
As is fairly article of long running soap operas,
the role of Kristen has been played by many different
actors over the years.
Considering that, maybe there's a chance that Vintrub could one
day reprise the role as an adult someday
soon. After Days of Our Lives,
Vintrub booked a small but notable role on an episode
of the Disney Channel sitcom Lizzie McGuire.
Entitled Gordo's Video. The season one episode concerns Lizzie's friend
Gordo setting up hidden cameras around the school.
In the midst of doing so,
he happens to catch Vintrub's character eating and belching.
Appropriately enough, her character was officially billed as Cute Burper,
as she recalled to Esquire.
I didn't even really have to burp,
but I practiced my burps for a long time before
that.
I'm a professional, disgusting person.
Fine. Trub made two more appearances on Lizzie McGuire on
the episode Here Comes Aaron Carter.
She plays the dancer, and she later appears as an
extra in Season 2's You're a Good Man Lizzie McGuire.
As she noted to Esquire,
comedy came early. I knew when I was a kid
that I was silly,
and I knew that I like people who were funny,
but I don't think I knew I was funny.
I didn't really think about it.
Well, you've got to figure out a way to get
everyone to see this.
With, ER, Days of Our Lives and Lizzie McGuire on
her resume,
Bond Trump had a pretty good run as a child
actor,
but then she nearly quit the industry for good.
Her reason wasn't burnout or exposure to vices or anything
dramatic like that.
Instead, she simply thought that it wasn't for her,
as she explained to Esquire.
I stopped around middle school and high school.
I remember thinking I should probably focus on something more
realistic.
This is probably not going to work out.
I have high hopes, but that's probably not enough to
make it in film.
But Feintraub couldn't quite shake the acting bug when she
went to college.
That's a terrible bout of boredom.
During that time in her life convinced her to return.
She attended the University of California,
San Diego, but she didn't particularly enjoy it until she
got herself on stage,
as she divulged to Esquire.
They had a really great theatre program,
so I just took theatre classes so I could not
go crazy and keep myself busy.
I totally got sucked back in.
When Von Drub won the role of Lily Adams in
the AT&T commercials,
she thought it would be just another short term acting
gig.
But the response was so strong that within three years
she had appeared in more than 40 ads for the
telecom company,
as AT&T Vice president of Advertising Valerie Vargas revealed to
Adweek in 2016.
The first spot was so successful for us that we
thought,
let's do another one and then another one and then
another one.
It was so well received that we kept bringing her
back.
So what is the secret behind the success of these
commercials according to Hank Pearlman of Hungry Man,
the company that produces them?
I think Milana's Lily resonates with audiences because she's a
multi dimensional character in a way that's rare for commercials.
We try as hard as we can not only to
make her funny,
but to make her as strong,
smart and human as possible.
Who's on TV now? NB CS time jumping,
tear jerking family drama. This Is Us was one of
the most popular broadcast network shows of the 20 tens
and early twenty 20s.
Over the course of its six seasons,
the Emmy award-winning series was a ratings juggernaut that also
served as a showcase of some amazing acting.
This Is Us was beloved for its unique style of
switching back and forth between three siblings growing up in
the 80s and 90s and their adult lives in the
present day. The oldest sibling was Kevin Pearson,
played by Justin Hartley, a dissatisfied TV star who leaves
his top rated show and joins an Off Broadway play
called Back of an Egg.
Feintrub had a recurring role on This Is Us as
Sloan Sandberg,
a playwright who dates Kevin for a brief spell.
She ultimately appeared in a total of 8 episodes in
the shows first season.
Feintrub had some serious comedy training,
having studied improv at the Upright Citizens Brigade and started
a number of college humor videos,
and that humorous background has led to some small but
memorable roles in several high profile projects.
In the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot,
for example, she made a brief dialogue free appearance as
Subway Rat Woman.
The scene involves her reacting with visible disgust when scores
of ghost rats poured out of a subway station.
The director of that movie was Paul Feig,
who also worked with Vinetreb on the short lived Yahoo
screen sitcom Other Space.
Vinetreb seems to be a favorite of another popular comedy
director,
as she popped up a couple of times on the
Netflix series Love,
which was Co created by Judd Apatow.
She played Natalie, the ex-girlfriend of the main character Gus.
While she's not yet nailist name Bond Drub has certainly
been rubbing shoulders with the right people.
It's 11:00 AM and you're stoned and you're at my
house.
I'm worried. In the summer of 2017,
Milana Weintraub landed one of the most sought after roles
in Hollywood.
She was cast as Doreen Green AKA Squirrel Girl on
Marvel's New Warriors,
a superhero comedy series that was set to air on
Freeform.
The show was going to revolve around 620 somethings dealing
with the challenges of young adulthood and being a superhero.
Weintraub was a relatively surprising choice for such a high
profile part,
especially since better known actors such as Anna Kendrick and
Shannon Purser had publicly lobbied to play the character.
But ultimately, Vintraub's admission into the club that is the
Marvel Cinematic Universe wound up rather muted in 2019 free
form,
and Disney canceled several small screen projects that were not
set to air on Disney Plus,
including New Warriors. But Weintraub eventually did get a chance
to play Squirrel Girl,
as she voiced the character on the animated short series
Marvel Rising Initiation and the TV movie Marvel Rising Secret
Warriors.
She also played her again on the narrative podcast Marvel,
Squirrel Girl, The Unbeatable Radio Show.
In addition to her acting career,
Melania Weintraub has been known for putting pen to paper,
or finger to keyboard as the case may be.
She's been credited as a writer on five Robot Chicken
episodes as well as multiple college humor sketches.
Outside of sketch comedy, she has a Co writing credit
on the 2019 film Mother's Little Helpers,
which she also starred in.
She's also written for websites like The Daily Beast and
Pop Sugar,
as well as on her own Instagram,
where she offers unique perspectives on family,
Judaism, and the acting life.
Beintraub's writing has even been nominated for awards.
In 2020, she was recognized as part of the writing
team for the streaming sketch comedy show Making Fun with
Akilah and Milana at the YouTube Streamy Awards.
In her miniseries That Moment When was nominated for a
Webbie Award and three Telly Awards.
A squirrel isn't the only furry creature that Weintraub has
inhabited.
In 2021, she starred as a mail carrier named Cecily
in the horror comedy movie Werewolves Within.
When a Blizzard causes the residents of a small town
to seek shelter in a lodge,
an even bigger problem is revealed when a werewolf starts
picking off the characters 1 by 1.
As the lack of trust gradually grows within the group,
the bodies continue to pile up.
Be a good neighbor
like Mr. Rogers with guns,
though. With guns, Yes. Skip ahead if you don't want
to be spoiled,
but in the end, Cecily and the friendly forest Ranger
named Finn are still alive.
The evidence seems to point to Finn as the werewolf,
but that's a big fake out,
as it turns out that Cecily was the lycanthrope all
along and she planted the seeds of paranoia to make
it easier to hunt everyone down.
Maybe she wasn't a fan of their current cell phone
plans.
Feintraub earned some rave reviews for the movie.
David Ehrlich of Indy Wire,
for one, declared Melana Feintraub is radiating movie star potential
in a Winston performance that shades her natural comic sass
with all sorts of self aware texture.
Or you could be me.
In a 2022 essay for The Daily Beast,
Ilana Weintraub wrote about some health problems that she suffered
back in 2020 that seriously impacted her quality of life.
As it turned out, she hurt one of her ankles
so badly that she couldn't move her foot.
The injuries sent painful jolts through her body,
a sensation she compared to the complicated and difficult labor
she experienced when giving birth to her first child.
That comparison may have come as a surprise to many
of her fans,
as she had kept her motherhood journey under wraps before
then.
But as it turned out,
Weintraub and her husband had welcomed a baby boy back
in May
2021. He arrived perfectly healthy,
but the labor experience wasn't so simple,
as the baby's head was pushing against his mom's spine
during the delivery,
which resulted in tremendous pain for her.
While Weintraub did reveal some of her motherhood story,
she's also kept the rest of it private as she
hasn't disclosed her son's name.
In addition to her showbiz career,
Vinetreb has made time for advocacy.
This includes being outspoken about abortion rights,
as she had an abortion herself when she was 25.
In her 2022 essay for The Daily Beast,
she revealed that at the time,
she was still taking random jobs to get by,
and this was not in a good financial space to
raise a child.
So when she accidentally forgot to take her birth control
and got pregnant,
she immediately had an abortion at her doctor's office.
When Weintraub eventually did have a baby,
she was able to bear difficult labor because she chose
to go through it.
She emphasized that both her experiences with abortion and birth
have impressed upon her the right for all Americans to
have the freedom and Bower to make their own choices
about their bodies, lives and futures.
Melana Weintraub was born in
1987 in Uzbekistan when it was a part of the
Soviet Union,
but she spent most of her life in the United
States.
Her father, meanwhile, spent much of his time working at
his business in Russia.
During an appearance on the podcast Meditative Story,
Feintreb shared what it was like to grow up with
a dad who was around only intermittently.
While he split his time evenly during her elementary school
years,
his time away from her increased as she got older.
This resulted in him missing a lot of important events
in her life,
including her but mitzvah. Feintreb's father continues to spend much
of his time away from his daughter,
though they do manage to stay in touch over the
phone and via occasional in person visits.
He also flew to the US after the birth of
her son,
although COVID-19 18 pandemic protocols required him to quarantine for
five days before he could play with his grandson.
While Vine Drub feels that she now has a pretty
good relationship with her dad,
she wants to have a different relationship with her own
son that isn't similarly long distance.