Jaime Elizabeth Pressly is an American actress and model. She is best known for playing Joy Turner on the NBC sitcom My Name Is Early, for which she was nominated for two Emmy Awards as well as a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She currently portrays Jill in the television series Mom. Take a look below for 25 more fun and fascinating facts about Jaime Pressly.
1. Pressly was born in Kinston, North Carolina, the daughter of Brenda Sue, a dance instructor, and James Liston Pressly, a car salesman.
2. She was raised in a Christian family.
3. In 1992, she moved with her family to Costa Mesa, California, where she spent the first semester of her high school sophomore year.
4. She spent her childhood and early teenage years training as a gymnast, which led her to modeling jobs.
5. At age 14, Pressly appeared on her first cover, Teen Magazine, and became the official spokesmodel for the International Cover Model Search.
6. At 15, she dropped out of school and went to Japan on a modeling contract.
7. She succeeded in having herself legally emancipated from her parents at the age of 15 so she could travel to Japan, as neither of her parents could make the trip.
8. Pressly starred as Violet in the 1997 film Poison Ivy: The New Seduction.
9. In 1998, she starred as Nikki on the short-lived TV series Push, and also played a recurring role as the undead assassin Mika in the TV action series Mortal Kombat: Conquest.
10. From 1999-2001, she played “Audrey” on the drama series Jack and Jill.
11. Pressly starred in the independent film Poor White Trash, playing scheming gold-digger Sandy Lake.
12. Pressly appeared in a number of films in 2001, including Not Another Teen Movie (playing Priscilla, a high school cheerleader) and Torque, as a crazed, motorcycle-riding criminal; and as a Southern love interest in the comedy Joe Dirt, opposite David Spade.
13. In 2001, she was made the new spokesmodel for Liz Claiborne Cosmetics and its fragrance Lucky You.
14. In 2002, she was ranked #8 in Stuff magazine’s “102 Sexiest Women in the World”.
15. In 2003, she launched a lingerie line, J’Aime, which later became a full sleepwear and ready-to-wear line.
16. In 2006, Maxim magazine named her #34 on its annual list; she is also featured in its gallery.
17. Pressly posed nude for the March 1998 and February 2004 issues of Playboy.
18. She also appeared nude in the May 2006 issue of Allure.
19. Pressly has revealed in interviews that she briefly struggled with bulimia as a teenager.
20. In 1996, she met DJ Eric Calvo (DJ Eric Cubeechee), and started dating in 2004. After Pressly became pregnant, the two were engaged in October 2006.
21. Pressly gave birth on May 11, 2007, in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to their child, Dezi James Calvo. In a February 2007 interview on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Pressly said she wanted the child to be bilingual (English/Spanish) to reflect Calvo’s Cuban heritage.
22. In November 2008, the couple announced their separation.
23. Nine months later, in July 2009, Pressly announced her engagement to entertainment lawyer Simran Singh.
24. They wed on September 26, 2009, at the Dick Clark estate, on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. On January 21, 2011, Pressly filed for divorce from Singh, citing irreconcilable differences.
25. On January 5, 2011, two weeks before filing for divorce, Pressly was arrested in Santa Monica, California for suspicion of driving under the influence. She eventually pleaded no contest and received three years of informal probation.
