Daniela Ruah Esquire September 2011

Daniela Sofia Korn Ruah (born December 2, 1983) is a Portuguese-American actress. She plays Kensi Blye in the CBS series NCIS: Los Angeles.

Ruah was born in Boston (USA), the only child of Dr. Moisés Carlos Bentes Ruah and his former wife Catarina Lia Azancot Korn. She has a distinguishable birthmark in her right eye, and her other eye is hazel. Her father was a resident in Otolaryngology (Ear, Nose, and Throat) in the Boston University-Tufts University Program. When Ruah was five years old, her father completed his Residency, and the family returned to Portugal, where the parents divorced and where she spent the rest of her childhood.[citation needed] Her father is of Portuguese Jewish descent. Ruah's mother is the daughter of a Sephardi mother, who was born in Portugal, and an Ashkenazi father, who was born (1922) in what is now Wrocław, Poland.

Ruah attended Saint Julian's School in Carcavelos, near Lisbon. She earned a Bachelor of Arts from London Metropolitan University. She was an active member of the Portuguese Jewish community, of which her father's second cousin, also a doctor, is the head. In 2003, the Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA) ran a piece about an annual gathering of Jewish young people from 32 countries sponsored by European Union of Jewish Students. Ruah, then 19 and still living in Lisbon, was one of the students the JTA interviewed. She said, "I've never been around as many Jews in my entire life. Here, you don't feel the need to explain to people who you are. I am meeting people who eat kosher for the first time ever."

Ruah speaks three languages fluently—Portuguese, English, and Spanish. She holds dual citizenship in the United States and Portugal

Daniela Ruah Esquire September 2011