She finished her sophomore year at Miami University of Oxford Ohio and was hired by the Milwaukee Opera Company, the Skylight Opera company and the Great American Children's Theatre 1978-1980.
She has been a co-host and psychic medium expert for author Whitley Strieber's radio web cast Dreamland, interviewing authors about their cutting edge books.
Marla no longer works as an actress. She left the business in 2002 to work as an international psychic medium and transformational consciousness coach.
Marla was raised in Bedford, Pennsylvania.
The vast majority of her work over the past 3 decades has consisted of guest starring roles on TV, stage work in plays and musicals and numerous TV commercials; the most popular being "Flo" the robotic mother in a three year campaign for Duracell Battery commercials directed by Barry Sonnenfeld.
Marla changed her birth name of Marla Fries to Marla Frees in 1991 after Matthew Diamond (who was directing Marla in an episode of Working Girl) suggested it.
Marla is a Graduate of the Monroe Institute of Consciousness.
She was nominated for a 1990 "Joseph Jefferson Award" for Best Supporting Actress in a Musical, as Lina Lamont, in "Singin in the Rain" at the Drury Lane Theatre in Oakbrook, Illinois.