Elizabeth Peña

September 23, 1959 - October 14, 2014

I was sad to hear about the passing of Elizabeth Peña, especially considering how young she still was.

In my adolescence, I became somewhat obsessed with an influential horror movie she was in called Jacob's Ladder. I've talked a little bit before about how as a teenager, I'd watch movies at night when I couldn't sleep. I would go through phases where I'd just watch one movie over and over every night, and then after a couple weeks or so, I'd switch to a different movie. Jacob's Ladder was one of the movies I did that with. In hindsight, that probably wasn't very good for my state of mind. I was so interested in the movie that it was also the first screenplay I ever read, and I used to be able to recite whole sections of dialogue just from seeing the movie so often.

I always thought Peña's performance as Jezzie in the film was quite striking. She had a way of jumping naturally back and forth from caring and beautiful, to frightening and rather ugly, sometimes even blurring the lines between the two. She also made me fall in love with the name Jezebel.