Jessica McNamee
Jessica McNamee is an actor, born 1986.
Home and Away gave Jessica McNamee her first acting job, as Lisa Duffy, and Packed to the Rafters made her recognizable across Australia as Sammy Rafter. That is the standard Australian pipeline. The interesting part is what she did with the exit.
The Loved Ones arrived in 2010 and is still the best film she has been in, a piece of Australian horror with a far crueler sense of humor than its premise advertises. She plays Mia, off to the side of the main plot, and it is the performance that proved she could do something other than soap.
America has mostly cast her for physical competence. Theresa Kelly, the patrol officer in Sirens, is the comic version. Sonya Blade in Mortal Kombat is the blunt version, played straighter than the film around her, and it made her a franchise fixture with Mortal Kombat II following. In between she has been Lori in The Meg, Lindsey Taylor in CHiPs and Jennifer in Black Water: Abyss, which adds up to a lot of films in which someone is in the water with something large.
The most serious project on the list is Battle of the Sexes, where she plays Margaret Court, a real figure and a genuinely awkward assignment. Upright is the Australian television she went home for and the funniest thing here. She has Evil Dead Wrath ahead of her, which suggests the genre lane is not closing any time soon.
Movies (12)
TV (3)
Where to start with Jessica McNamee
The Loved Ones first. It is a nasty, very funny Australian horror film and it will tell you more about her instincts than any of the American work.
Mortal Kombat is the reason most people arrive at this page. Take it for what it is, a video game adaptation that treats its fights seriously and everything else not at all, with a Sonya Blade played considerably straighter than the material.
Battle of the Sexes is the most demanding thing here, since playing Margaret Court means playing a real person the film has strong opinions about. Upright is where she gets to be funny on purpose.
The Meg and Black Water: Abyss are the creature features, in descending order of budget and ascending order of honesty about what they are. Sirens is the series that established her in the United States.