Acclaimed Actress Caity Jayne Announces Latest Role

Dec. 6, 2011 - PRLog -- After a critically-acclaimed performance as a tragic waitress chasing an ill-fated romance, Caity Jayne is set to make an impact with her new film, The Secret of Steephill House, a story about a seemingly normal young woman trapped in an apparently abandoned mental hospital who begins to hear voices and see mysterious figures walking the halls.

This will be the fourth major project for Jayne, who began her film career in 2005 with a leading role in the black and white horror, Mystery of Fear. Originally intended to be a small independent movie set for limited release, it ended up enjoying a run at the biggest screen in London, the Imax Cinema, largely, notes producer Dan Folly, because of Jayne’s magnetic performance in the role of Elizabeth.  

Jayne didn’t appear on screen again for another four years, this time in the role of troubled teen, Erica, who ultimately took her own life. The movie, entitled Behind Her Smile, was the first major U.S. success for British-born Caity and was followed by a television role in TNT’s “Leverage” and then, earlier this year, the part of Natali Garcia in Finding Spencer as a young Canadian waitress who dedicates ten years of her adult life to tracking down a man she encountered for a few moments.  

Jayne’s success in the acting profession, however, goes back much further than 2005. Landing her first lead role in 1998, Jayne continued in the theatre virtually non-stop, some years appearing in as many as five productions in a year - no small feat for even the most accomplished actresses. But it isn’t just the number of roles that is impressive. Jayne has accumulated credits that include works by American greats Tennessee Williams (Summer and Smoke, A Streetcar Named Desire, Sweet Bird of Youth) and Arthur Miller (A View from the Bridge), Shakespeare (Two Gentlemen of Verona, Romeo and Juliet) as well as a number of roles that had never been played before. Her most recent appearance on the London stage was in the role of Nancy in Stuart Keane’s American Civil Rights play, "Won’t you go to lunch with me today?" This was the first time the play had been staged, and the first time the story of the Little Rock Nine had been performed on a London stage. Keane says, “To have played leading roles in the best works ever written for the theatre is a significant achievement. To have played these roles, to full houses, to huge acclaim, at fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old? To my knowledge, no other actress has ever done that.”

Along the way, Jayne has received recognition from the London Academy of Music and Drama and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, as well as earning an honors degree in Drama and Performance Studies. Her performances have not only established her as one of the most sought after actresses in the United Kingdom - and now the United States - but have launched the careers of several others, such as Stuart Keane, who co-founded Dellago Productions and Noelani Mei Lee, an independent film director.

Jayne says that focusing on one project at a time has played a large part in her success. “I try not to look ahead or look back too much”, she says. “I just think about what I’m doing right now and that particular role, that story, and making it my best performance so far. If I get excited about something that’s coming up, that’s fine, but I don’t ever let myself obsess over where I’m going to be a year from now. My career has been varied and unpredictable so far, so I have confidence that a year, five years from now, I’ll still be happy with the choices I’m making.”