British comedian, writer and actress, 1972-
Born in Lewisham and brought up in Brighton with a comedy career that began at the age of two when she walked into her parent's bedroom wearing a pair of knickers on her head, (a joke that she has successfully used ever since, according to her press release) going on to sharpen her writing skills at school, creating unintelligible sci-fi stories.
After spending the years between 1987 and 1991 with the National Youth Theatre, she landed the role of Helga in the Disney film Swing Kids followed by two months filming on an ice-rink for Peter Greenaway's film The Baby of Macon. Turning her talents back to writing, she teamed up with her best friend Katy Carmichael (Twist in Spaced) and spent a short stint on the open mike circuit, both dressing up as Liz Hurley under the collective name The Liz Hurleys. They also wrote Ruby's Room together, a short film which never quite made it to the production stage due to Jessica appearing as Alice in the TV nursing drama Staying Alive, taking time between seasons to pop up with Katy again in Six Pairs of Pants, an offbeat sketch show also starring Sally Phillips and Simon Pegg.
Becoming friends with Simon, they appeared together again on Paramount's cult show Asylum along with Julian Barrett, Adam Bloom, Norman Lovett and director Edgar Wright and started working together on a small sitcom about a mismatched, unattatched couple sharing a flat in London. Inspired by Edgar's cinematic directing style, they completed writing the first episode of Spaced within two weeks but waited two years for it to go into production while Jessica appeared as Cheryl, the persistently just-slightly-overweight next-door neighbour in The Royle Family.
With two series of Spaced completed and plans for a third in the pipeline, Jessica continues to act, appearing in ITV's Bob and Rose alongside Alan Davies and Tomorrow La Scala! about an opera company that performs Sweeney Todd for a maximum security prison.
research thanks cannon:
www.spaced-out.org.uk
spaced season one dvd
tenminjoe for the msg hint