Jude Zappala

Jude Zappala was born in North Bay, Ontario Canada on October 1st, 2005. He first took the stage with a speaking role at the age of 4 in a local production of Prince of Egypt, where he played Rameses' son. As a young child, Jude took tap, jazz, ballet and hip-hop dance classes and gymnastics, and he played soccer, hockey and baseball. At the age of 9, he received his first guitar, and has been playing ever since. When Jude was cast as Aladdin in another local theatre production, his singing talent became apparent. At the age of 13, he impressed audiences as Jack Kelly in Newsis, and he followed that production up with playing Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever, Nick Bottom in Something Rotten, Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar, Chad in All Shook Up, and Dr. Frederick Frankenstein in Young Frankenstein, all in North Bay. At 15, he decided to try his hand at film acting, and almost immediately landed the role of Jake Sellers in Emily Hagin's delightful Sorry About the Demon. While filming that production, he landed a smaller role in the film North of Normal. His scene as a classmate who taunts the protagonist Cea about her mother Michelle was cut from the film by the time it premiered at TIFF, though Jude still appears in the credits. Jude has appeared in The Boy in the Woods as a dead Jewish boy whom the protagonists come across and strip of his clothes, and has a role in Drive Back Home, starring Alan Cumming. Jude continues to perform music around his hometown and the Muskokas, and is constantly creating songs in his basement which feature him on guitar, bass, drums, piano, saxophone, cello, melodica and more. He has put together a few bands that he's directed and who have performed around North Bay. Jude is an academic student and graduated early out of high school in grade 11. He went through a French-immersion program at school, and was his schools' President at both elementary and secondary levels. Jude plans to study bio-chemistry at university in the fall of 2023.