Jess Weixler

The Rise of the Vagina Dentata

In 2007, Jess Weixler arrived at the Sundance Film Festival with a movie most actresses would have turned down for fear of ridicule. It was called Teeth. She played a teenager who discovers her anatomy is a biological weapon against sexual predators.

Won the Special Jury Prize for acting.

But before that breakthrough, Weixler had already studied at Juilliard in New York. There she formed a friendship with Jessica Chastain that would end up shaping part of her professional circle years later. Her classical training allowed her to approach genre cinema with a restraint few expected from a horror debutante.

And the gamble paid off.

After the buzz from Sundance, the industry tried to pigeonhole her into weird-girl roles. But she preferred to work on the fringes of independent productions to avoid the one-sided contracts of major studios. In 2009, she shot Alexander the Last under the direction of Joe Swanberg. It was pure improvisation, with a script that was barely a three-page outline.

Stability Between Lawyers and Monsters

Television offered her the financial breathing room that independent film had denied her. In 2013, she joined the cast of The Good Wife to play Robyn Burdine. Her character was a private investigator who contrasted with the rigidity of Alicia Florrick's law firm.

She appeared in 19 episodes between 2013 and 2015.

That visibility on television allowed her to choose film projects with more patience. In 2014, she took part in the ambitious triptych The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby. Director Ned Benson shot three versions of the same story, and Weixler played the lead's sister in all of them.

Independent film is a tricky business.

In 2017, she landed a lead role in the series The Son alongside Pierce Brosnan. The shoot in Texas was grueling, and she learned to handle weapons and to get a feel for the pace of a large-scale period production. So when the chance came to join a big-budget horror film, she didn't hesitate.

In 2019, she joined the cast of It Chapter Two. She played Audra Phillips in a film that grossed more than $470 million worldwide. That job was her biggest commercial success to date, but it didn't change how she approached her craft.

Realism and Period Shoots

In 2021, she worked on The Eyes of Tammy Faye under the direction of Michael Showalter. The project focused on the rise and fall of televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. Weixler brought a note of normalcy to a film dominated by prosthetic makeup and theatrical performances.

In 2023, she joined the second season of The Gilded Age on HBO.

The Julian Fellowes series demanded absolute technical precision in its costumes and its late-19th-century language. But Weixler was already used to working within narrative constraints after years moving between contemporary drama and historical fiction.

In 2024, she took part in the film A Nice Indian Boy, directed by Roshan Sethi. Filming took place mainly in locations in Montreal during the spring. The production had a tight budget and a work plan of 22 shooting days.