Jackie van Beek

Acting

Skills

Accents

Acting Experience

Voice

Comedy

Comedy

Biography

In the late 90s, Jackie van Beek became a part of the burgeoning Wellington theatre scene, which was centred around Victoria University and Bats Theatre. She wrote, produced and performed in a run of productions, alongside Bret McKenzie, Jemaine Clement, and her old Onslow College classmates Loren Taylor and Taika Waititi. “Wellington in the 90s, for me, was just this hugely creative, liberating period of time” she said in an extended interview for TV series Funny As.

In 2005 van Beek teamed up with comedian Jonathan Brugh to create black comedy My Brother and I are Porn Stars. The show toured New Zealand’s main centres before playing at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and selling out two seasons at London’s Soho Theatre. Van Beek and Brugh also took the starring roles, as two abandoned incestuous siblings, left to run their parent’s porn business.

Van Beek fell into filmmaking after finding work running a clown workshop in Alice Springs. Soon she was offered the chance to make a short film there — despite not having film experience. One Shoe Short, about two kids searching for a shoe in Alice Springs, won Best Indigenous Achievement at the St Kilda Film Festival and was voted Best Film made by Adults for Children at a Sydney film festival devoted to young people.

Over the next decade spent between Aotearoa, England and Australia, she directed seven short films, which screened at international festivals (including Berlin, BFI London, Melbourne and Palm Springs).

In 2018 the ever versatile van Beek co-wrote, co-directed and co-starred with Madeleine Sami in relationship comedy The Breaker Upperers. Sami and van Beek’s characters play the service providers of the title, helping end relationships that have done their dash. Van Beek came up with the film’s premise over a cup of coffee. The film debuted at American festival South By South West in March 2018, before arriving in New Zealand cinemas in May and finding an international home on Netflix.

Absurd comedy Nude Tuesday, about a married couple trying to reignite their romantic flame, saw van Beek try something completely different — write a film in which the characters speak only in gibberish. A fan of British comedian Julia Davis, van Beek asked Davis to come up with the ridiculous and frisky subtitles, ‘translating’ the made up language. Director Armagan Ballantyne found that the made up language helped the actors concentrate on the tone of scenes, rather than trying to remember their lines.

Van Beek is also an established performer, with an array of comic roles on both stage (Hudson & Halls Live, Flashdunce) and screen. She was the upfront Gloria in 800 Words, hapless producer Pauline in TV sketch comedy Funny Girls, and dominating fiancée Stacey in Coverband. In semi-improvised web series Educators (2018) — which she co-created with Brugh and her partner Jesse Griffin — she played opinionated guidance counsellor Robyn Duffy.

In hit mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows (2014), she played the fawning wannabe to Jonathan Brugh’s vampire. At the 2014 NZ Film Awards she scored a Best Supporting Actress gong for the role. Van Beek thrived on her improvised role, and loved working with her “dear old friends”, directors Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement. She went on to direct for Shadows spinoff Wellington Paranormal.