About

Jessica Kaye was born in South Africa and raised in Minneapolis. After studying Literature and Performance Studies at Harvard, she earned her MFA in Acting at Columbia. While in New York, she starred in plays and feature films, produced and performed in ribald performance-art parties, and played a soap opera villain on television’s ONE LIFE TO LIVE. 

In 2008, she produced and starred in GARGOYLE, a SAFTA-nominated short film shot in Johannesburg. In 2013, she received an MFA in Film Production from USC. Her short films ANGEL and FABIAN DEBORA, A LIFE FOR ART, screened at numerous festivals. Her short film SHORTAGE was executive-produced by James Franco. 

Kaye is the co-writer/director and lead actor of the feature film INHERITANCE, shot on location in Belize. INHERITANCE premiered at SXSW in 2017 and was released theatrically and on VOD.

In 2019, she completed the AFI Directing Workshop for Women, where she wrote and directed the short film SKATER, about a young figure skater who is possessed by the spirit of her skating idol on the day of a major competition.

A 2019-2020 participant in the Universal Directors Initiative at Universal Studios, she is a co-creator and lead actor in the pilot EVERYONE TOGETHER, which was set to premiere at SXSW March 2020. It won BEST PILOT at Series Fest 2020.

Currently, she is writing a psychological fantasy/horror film called THE DESERT about a young actress who runs away to the desert to write a screenplay with her director boyfriend. When they get there, she is possessed by a strange entity that inspires them creatively but threatens to tear her and their relationship apart.