Katalin Rodriguez-Ogren (maiden name Katalin Rodriguez Zamiar; born August 14, 1973 in Chicago, Illinois, USA) is an American martial artist, sportswriter and actress, who played Kitana, Mileena, and Jade in Mortal Kombat II.

Biography Edit

Katalin Zamiar taught an undergraduate forensic science course at the University of Illinois and holds a degree in anthropology from the same university. She has studied martial arts since 1982 and is an accomplished martial artist holding black belts in Tae Kwon Do, Goju Karate, and Shorin Ryu Karate.

She is the owner of POW! Mixed Martial Arts and Chicago Krav Maga training centers. Along with teaching at her training center in downtown Chicago, Zamiar often covers the Ultimate Fighting Championship for Grappling magazine, focusing primarily on features and interviews. She has over 150 articles published in various martial arts magazines including Black Belt and Inside Kung Fu, among others, and has been featured in Shape, Allure and Self magazines.

Katalin is an international fitness and martial arts presenter teaching at various conferences from Taipei to Aruba, and has spent some time as a spokesperson for the firm Revgear. She also writes conditioning materials and manuals, and is a featured trainer on Podfitness.com.

In video games and film Edit

Katalin Zamiar is best known for her characterizations of the three female ninja characters Kitana, Mileena, and Jade in the 1993 cult classic video game Mortal Kombat II (her video shoot costume was Kitana's blue; John Tobias created Mileena and Jade by altering the character colors to purple and green). She was portrayed by Kitana and Mileena only, and Jade was taken by Kitana or Mileena. In 1997, Zamiar, together with Philip Ahn (Shang Tsung in MKII) and Elizabeth Malecki (Sonya in Mortal Kombat), filed a lawsuit against Midway Games over lack of royalties for the home ports of the game, a case in which Midway emerged victorious.

In 1995, she and fellow Mortal Kombat actors Ho Sung Pak (Liu Kang in the games and her boyfriend at the time), Daniel Pesina, and Phillip Ahn appeared in Thea Realm Fighters, a never-released fighting game produced exclusively for the Atari Jaguar. Later, she made two martial arts conditioning videos with Pak. In 1996 she played a ninja woman character Chae Lee in the PC all-women fighting game Catfight.

In 2003, she played a minor part in the martial arts film Book of Swords. In a nod to her Mortal Kombat alter egos, Katalin once again portrayed a female ninja character, dressed in similar clothing as her MKII counterparts and even wielding two sai like Mileena does. The movie also starred Pesina, Pak, and another Mortal Kombat actor, Richard Divizio, who are also seen in MK-style clothing/roles throughout the movie.

She can also be seen in various workout videos, as she has more than 15 fitness/martial arts videos/DVDs on the market.