Tiffany Daniels
Wes Klein Photography
For Hollywood star Tiffany Daniels, coming back to her hometown of San Diego means a place of peace, joy, and hell.
“I love waking up in the morning and just sitting on my mom’s backyard with a cup of matcha and just taking in the quiet cool San Diego morning air,” says Daniels. “One of the things I always make sure I do is go on long, beautiful walks in Tierrasanta and the surrounding areas. And then I’ll finish it off with a really powerful series of runs up and down the Tierrasanta Stairs.”
Also known as the “Stairway to Hell” or “Stairs of Death,” the super steep incline, made up of 112 steps and located on Clairemont Mesa and Antigua Boulevards, is notorious for its challenging climb. It even has its own Yelp page and YouTube video.
But Daniels doesn’t shy away from a challenge, and this drive is exactly the kind of quality that has made her so successful in the world of show business.
Growing up in Paradise Hills and Tierrasanta, she attended the prestigious audition-only public arts magnet school, the San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts (SCPA).
“My closest friends to this day came from SCPA. The school was just filled with like-minded individuals like myself,” recalls Daniels. “We had a very deep connection on a creative and spiritual level because we were all very determined to develop our art together. A bunch of us auditioned for Starlight Bowl to see if we could land jobs. I performed in four musicals in Balboa Park and Spreckels Theater.”
“One of my best friends from SCPA, Carleton Overstreet, Jr., is working diligently to get the Starlight Bowl back up and running,” continues Daniels. “It really was a magical place and it launched the professional musical theater careers of a lot of SCPA students.”
After high school, Daniels set out for New York—not to tear up the theater stages but to attend Cornell University where she eventually received a bachelor of science in Hotel and Restaurant Administration. After graduation, she had enough snow and ice and moved back to California and to Los Angeles.
Currently, she stars in the Nickelodeon hit show, That Girl Lay Lay, executive produced by Will Packer and the late comedian David A. Arnold. The show made Netflix’s Top 10 lists in 2021 and 2022, and she’s currently filming season two.
Daniels also appeared in La La Land in the opening scene with extras breaking from their vehicles and dancing on top of cars stuck in a traffic jam. The crew rehearsed that scene for three weeks, rearranging their cars in the studio parking lot so that they could practice in and on top of them, even the skateboarder and biker.
“The opening number took two whole days to film. It was all done in only two shots. So if anyone stepped out of line, we had to start over,” said Daniels. They started at 3 a.m. and filmed all day on an overpass when temperatures shot up to 97 degrees.
Daniels’ other accolades include roles on CSI-Cyber, The Mindy Project, Big Bang Theory, NCIS and Criminal Minds and toured with Oprah Winfrey’s production of The Color Purple.
“My first acting teacher said to me, very early on in my training, that discipline is freedom. So if you stay the course, what is meant for you will find you,” she says. “I’ve just worked extremely hard to pull myself back up from all of the rejection, knowing that all the rejection is temporary and the winners are the disciplined.”
Now that she’s closer to home, when she’s back in San Diego, she spends time with her mother, nephew, and two nieces, often at Donna Jean’s in Hillcrest for a gourmet vegan meal and around town to explore the city.
For Daniels, San Diego has been a place of healing and recovery. “So much rejection happens in this industry all the time. For every ‘yes,’ there are like a hundred ‘no’s.’ You can’t let a no derail you from your path and your journey. I’ve gotten really good at bouncing back. And that’s a lot due to the joy and peace that San Diego brings me,” said Daniels.
