JODI LYN O’KEEFE Words by TARA DEVINCENZO Photos by CATHERINE POWELL Hair & Make-Up by BIANCA DIMILLO
4
On paper, Jodi Lyn O’Keefe is a typical, New Jersey-born Irish Catholic girl. When you speak to her, you can tell she was never just typical. Now, looking at her lengthy filmography, it is somewhat of a stretch to imagine her as shy and introverted. At a young age, she was very small before shooting up 9 inches in one summer. “She didn’t know how I survived it, the growing pains,” she says of her mother’s reaction to her height. “I was awkward as hell, I really was.” By the time she was 8 or 9 years old, she found herself entering the modeling business for no other reason than to start a college fund. The idea spawned somewhat from her older sister Heather, who Jodi says was 6 feet tall and “jaw-droppingly beautiful.” “They asked me if I wanted to do it, I never really had any big desire,” Jodi recalls. Her desire finally peaked when she saw her cousin in the business as well. The perks of going to shows and securing auditions sealed the deal for Jodi, so she gave it a shot. She was mostly doing low-profile catalog modeling, still with the intention of it being strictly a job. Suddenly, and accidentally, she found herself switching gears from modeling to acting. “Someone gave me a script, I read it, and then they asked me what I thought about it,” she says. “My whole world changed.” As her new path began to open up in front of her, she remembers it being a rocky start. Auditioning for the same movie no less than a dozen times, no one knew who she was, but the calls starting coming in from people who were interested in finding out. “It accidentally made me realize who I am, which is kind of incredible,” she says. Acting ended up rerouting her college plans. She booked a soap opera at the old NBC Studios in Brooklyn, followed by a
