Australian Actress Jessica Joseph- McDermott

Keeping her eye on the prize, talented and beautiful actress Jessica Joseph-McDermott

At first, I thought I was going to write about an established Australian actress who is currently living in Los Angeles. And then I found out that I was supposed to do a piece on an award-winning writer who is very well respected down under for her journalistic skills and that she, too resides in L.A. for the time being. After a bit of investigating I realized that this strikingly beautiful young woman, Jessica Joseph-McDermott can claim both talents as her own. She is an exceptional actress and an intelligent and fluid writer. So, what to do; write about the actress or the writer?

 

The reason it is perplexing is because hyphenates that is, people who do more than one thing very well�" don’t usually sit still for an interview because they are always off somewhere multi-tasking and achieving more than one goal at a time �" because they can. Jessica is perhaps not that different from other genius hyphenates but we did catch her in a momentary lull, which gave us time, (not much) to talk to her about both of her creative skills.

 

Jessica loves acting and there’s nothing quite as thrilling, she says, as getting into another character and feeling and expressing that. Jessica has been in too many projects to mention them all here in this space but we should say that she has been in numerous stage productions in Australia, along with countless commercials, TV shows and films. She’s even been featured in some of Australia’s finest opera productions: The Marriage of Figaro, Cosi Fan Tutte, La Boheme and The Love Of The Nightingale, among others.

 

She studied acting at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in Australia, and the legendary Stella Adler Academy of Acting & Theatre. If you see her acting reel you will see that she is compelling and her American accent is flawless. In fact, her natural beauty takes a back seat to her thespian skills. When she is in a scene Jessica disappears and the character she’s portraying takes over.

 

What her reel doesn’t show you is that Jessica is a highly trained and a highly skilled dancer, especially in ballet, contemporary, jazz dancing, modern and Irish dancing. She is also athletic and skilled in kick-boxing, yoga, canoeing, horse riding and ice-skating. Did we mention that Jessica is an award-winning writer? Of course we did �" but we will have to delve more into that side of this most interesting woman at another time.