Emily O'Brien was born in Bedfordshire, England, and then later moved with her family to Carlsbad, California when she was ten years old. Her mother is Persian and her father is British and she has one young sibling who is acclaimed wardrobe stylist Natalie O'Brien.
 

O'Brien's parents, Flora and Michael O’Brien, say, “Acting is the only thing she wanted to do.” After being mesmerized from watching the local town puppet shows she decided she herself wanted to perform as a child in England. Once in America, She was in several plays at Carlsbad High School, where she graduated in 2003 playing Cosette in Les Miserables in her final year.

She attended Mira Costa College for Performing Arts. In her final year there she was named the first Mira Costa finalist in the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival’s Irene Ryan Acting Competition in 2005, where she was pitted against several hundred students from colleges and universities across the country.
O'Brien speaks Farsi fluently and has studied French and Spanish.

Emily has been nominated for three Daytime Emmy Awards for her work as Jana Fisher on The Young And The Restless. 



Since Young and the Restless she traveled back to her home in London where she studied Shakespeare and Contemporary Drama at Guildhall school of Music and Drama. London was where she decided that she had a talent for screen writing. 



As a writer she wrote, produced and acted in her first short film "Beatrice" which won Best Film of 2011 at The Big Island Film Festival and premiered at Hollywood's Chinese Theatre.



She continues to pursue her passion for writing and theater today in Los Angeles and New York.