Jaime Pressly takes nothing for granted except her own tenacity.

She leaves nothing to chance when she lands a role. Borrowing from real life, “I’m gonna watch, pay attention and emulate,” she says. “The way I’m gonna get under the skin of that character is to find something to relate to – to personalize the role.”

Pressly did that three seasons ago after winning the plum role of Joy Turner on the NBC comedy “My Name Is Earl” (airing Thursday at 8 p.m. EST). Joy is the trashy, calculating bombshell of an ex-wife of Earl, the dimwitted born-again Samaritan whose lottery earnings she would love to get her nail-extension claws on.

Mascara and big hair, hot pants and tank tops all are part of Joy’s repertoire. So is a feisty refusal to be messed with. To depict Joy, Pressly drew on her rural roots in Kinston, N.C., and the survival instinct they share.

“We’re both tough as nails but softies on the inside,” says Pressly.

But that’s where the similarities end. During a recent interview, the 31-year-old Pressly’s shapely form is clad in jeans and a stylish sweater, with no BeDazzling or cleavage in sight, and no sign of Joy’s incessant gum snapping.

What does it say about Pressly, the actress, that the differences between her and the character she plays remain a source of wonder? Maybe she does her job portraying Joy too well.

“I’m not her, but no one wants to believe it,” Pressly says, “because I am from the South, and my past roles have indicated that’s all that I can be.”

Make no mistake, she loves her character, cherishes the series and voices her gratitude for having been chosen.

She is grateful, too, for the Emmy she won a year ago. When she heard her name announced, she felt years of stick-to-itiveness had been borne out.

“You know how your leg falls asleep? That’s how my whole body felt,” she says with a laugh, “and I’m telling myself, ‘You HAVE to walk up on that stage!’ ”

Read more… »

As she recently celebrated the first birthday of her first child, son Dezi James, 1, actress Jaime Pressly says that she and fiancé Eric Cubiche are in no hurry to expand their brood. Taking the time to make Dezi feel “special” is a priority for the couple, who say they are also taking the time to prioritize each other.

I want to give Dezi as much attention as possible and solidify our relationship…I want [Dezi] to know… that we love him.

Since becoming a mom, Jaime said that “things matter to me more now, whether it’s finding a cure for breast cancer or saving the planet.” The 30-year-old actress and star of My Name is Earl added that she and Eric will have another child “when we’re old enough and we can handle it!”

From the Celebrity Baby Blog

In Step With…Jaime Pressly
By James Brady, PARADE, February 10, 2008

This is the very first actress I have ever interviewed while she was driving through the local car wash. But I quickly learned that blond, beautiful Jaime Pressly, the Emmy Award-winning star of the hit NBC series My Name Is Earl, has a style of her own.

I began by asking Jaime about her little boy, just 10 months old. Why is his name Dezi? “His father is Cuban,” Jaime told me, “and he always mimics how Desi Arnaz greeted Lucy: ‘Hi, honey. I’m home.’ So we named our son for Desi but changed the spelling. He’s almost crawling and is the most animated child. Really, Mr. Personality.”

Growing up in small-town North Carolina, Jaime was a competitive gymnast and dancer as a kid. By 15, she was modeling in Japan and Italy—without a chaperone! “I traveled alone, but there were all these other models,” she said. “I was the youngest, so they all sort of protected me.”

Later, Jaime moved to L.A. and began to get small TV and movie jobs. But it’s her current series that Jaime considers her breakthrough role. “Earl is so important to me,” she said. “I was supposed to be in only a few episodes, but they let me get my teeth into it. Then it was, ‘You’re scoring with the audience. We’re going to have you in every episode.’ The Emmy has changed everyone’s perception of me.”

Her role models? “Goldie Hawn, the smartest dumb blonde in America,” Jaime said. “Shirley Mac­Laine, because she was a dancer too, and Katharine Hepburn. Hollywood blackballed her because her movies didn’t sell. So she went back to New York, did The Philadelphia Story on Broadway, bought the rights and, at age 32, made the movie. And it was a smash hit. I like that.”

Brady’s Bits
Jaime Pressly knows how to make a buck. In addition to her hit TV series, she has a colorful new memoir out in May and a role in the animated film Horton Hears a Who!, opening next month. She also has a fashion label she calls J’aime, a play on her own name and the French phrase for “I love.” “We just showed our new line for spring,” she said proudly. Then there are Jaime’s real estate interests: “Every two years or so, I move, buy a new house,” she said. “Not because I am looking for perfection but because I love real estate. I’ve done very well.” And after the car wash, where was Jaime headed? “I’m en route to meet with the director and producer of a really great movie.”
Personal
Born July 30, 1977, in Kinston, N.C. One son, Dezi, with partner Eric Calvo.

Why You Know Her
She plays the smart-mouthed ex-wife Joy on My Name Is Earl. Before that, she was in films like Joe Dirt and Can’t Hardly Wait.

What You Don’t Know
She was legally emancipated from her parents as a teen but says, “It wasn’t a Macaulay Culkin thing. It was because of child-labor laws.

From Parade Magazine

Jaime Pressly on Motherhood: ‘You Have to Find Balance’

By Kate Klise and Gerri Miller, PEOPLE MAGAZINE, January 2, 2008

Jaime Pressly, whose son Dezi James is now seven months old, has some juggling advice for new moms.

“You have to find balance,” the My Name Is Earl actress tells PEOPLE. “You have to make time for yourself and find ‘me’ time, whether that means taking a 15-minute bath or taking time to work out while someone watches the kids.”

Taking a night off from parenting with fiancé Eric Cubiche – Dezi was with Pressly’s mom in California – the pair stepped out at the Dec. 29 opening of Home St. Louis, a nightclub in St. Charles, Mo., and Pressly raved about her son’s first Christmas.

“It was great. He didn’t care about any of the toys. He only cared about the wrapping it came in-the tissue paper and the boxes.”

Pressly says it took her 12 weeks to shed the 42 lbs. she gained after Dezi’s May 2007 birth. “I did it the old-fashioned way. I worked out with a trainer and resistance weights, and I dieted. I did the cabbage soup diet twice.”

Is she ready for another baby? “We definitely want more children. Just not right now,” says the 30-year-old actress, who hasn’t set a wedding date. “We’re happy with things the way they are. Look at Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell. They make it work [without being married].”

As for New Year’s resolutions, Pressly vows “to keep a balance in my life between my son and Eric and work. If you don’t,” she says, “this business can get out of control.”

From People Magazine

My name is Jaime

You know me as Jaime Pressly, the Emmy-winning co-star of Earl. What you don’t know is how my life suddenly changed in Costa Mesa, and why my tattoo tells the whole story.

By Tina Borgatta, ORANGE COAST, January 2008

Jaime Pressly knows a thing or two about karma. For starters, she plays a key part in a show that’s all about righting wrongs. And the idea that what goes around comes around has been a guiding force in just about every big decision the My Name is Earl star has made. At cattle calls—both as a model and as an actress—she says she has always behaved in a kind and friendly manner toward her competition. She has tried to live a clean, spiritual life. (“My home looks like Buddha Central,” she says.) And she has always considered the consequences of her actions—even as a teenager in Costa Mesa.

“My little sister and I are 17 years apart, and the day she was born, I remember holding her for the first time,” says Pressly, who plays the loudmouth, trailer park-dwelling Joy on the award-winning NBC sitcom. “Tears were streaming down my face, and I remember saying to myself, ‘She’s going to need someone to look up to.’ If she needed somebody, I wanted to be there. But if I wasn’t somebody she could be proud of, then she wasn’t going to want to turn to me. And that was all I needed to get me going.”

Like most teens, Pressly was struggling to find her way in life. Sure, she was good-looking, outgoing, and popular, just as she is today. She had no trouble making friends—in fact, she remains close with many of those same pals.

But she was different.

Pressly was blessed with knockout looks. Her big blue eyes, high cheekbones, brilliant smile, and lean, athletic build have won her high marks as the kind of blond that gentlemen prefer. She’s graced the pages of magazines such as Playboy, Esquire, and Maxim—which named her among its list of “9 Hottest Pregnant Women, Ever,” picturing her with a swollen belly shortly before her son with disc jockey Eric Calvo was born in May. In 2002, Stuff magazine ranked her eighth among its “102 Sexiest Women in the World,” and AskMen.com says she has the kind of strong presence that “is hard to find in a woman, and when we find it, we instantly become fans.”

Then there’s her comedic talent manifested in the role of Joy—the fast-talking, smartass, and trashy ex-wife of the namesake character in My Name is Earl. She created a unique dialect of four Southern accents for that part, and her talent earned her two Emmy nominations. She took home the golden figurine for the first time in September.

“Everyone who watches the show can see how talented she is,” says the sitcom’s creator, Greg Garcia. “She can play the comedy, and then we’ll throw her something that requires some emotion or drama, and she can do it. … She can play everything we give her, and then she’ll do something more—she’ll throw in a facial expression or she’ll come up with a different way to say a line, and it comes out 10 times better.”

That doesn’t mean her many successes came easily. Earl followed a short-lived television series, Jack & Jill, and a string of roles in B movies: Poison Ivy: The New Seduction (1997), Trash (1999), Poor White Trash (2000), Tomcats (2001), Demon Island (2002)—the list goes on.

Never one to settle, Pressly decided to try her hand at business while juggling her acting career, and in 2003 she launched a clothing line called J’aime (which means “I love” in French). She started with a lingerie collection—funded with her own money. It has grown in the years since, and in October she introduced a new, high-end collection to the line.

Pressly is determined— and always has been. By the time her younger sister was born, she already had been on her own for two years.

At 15, during her sophomore year at Costa Mesa High School, she became an emancipated minor—the result of a modeling contract that required her to move to Japan for three months. Neither of her parents could afford to go. Her father was still living in her native North Carolina. Pressly had persuaded her mom to move West during her parents’ divorce; she was drawn to the glamour of Southern California and the opportunities it presented. Those were lean times, so her parents supported the move to emancipation—mainly because, as Pressly puts it, she didn’t give them a choice.

“They would have gotten in trouble if they hadn’t,” she says. “And I was going to go with or without them. I was 15 going on 30. I was very headstrong and independent, and I thought, ‘OK, I don’t need anybody to go to Japan with me just to help me get on and off the train.’”

She arrived in Japan with $500 in her pocket. The agency put her up in an apartment with a few other models, then deducted her rent and other related expenses from her paycheck—which took a huge chunk out of her net profits. And then, of course, the high cost of living took another big bite. A Big Mac, she remembers, cost a whopping $7.

“It was a crazy experience,” Pressly recalls. “I was getting up at 5 a.m., and getting on a train, and then boarding a trolley to get to my shoots—and I was only 15.”

Homesickness was inevitable. To a 15-year-old girl, three months seemed like a lifetime.

“I had one tape and one video—I couldn’t afford to buy anything over there,” she says. “So all I had to listen to was Journey, and that alone was enough to make you want to slit your wrists. And I watched the same Kids in the Hall tape over and over again.”

When her three months were up, she returned to Costa Mesa a much different person. Though very bright, she was disinterested in the typical high school curriculum. She enrolled at Monte Vista High School, an alternative education center in Newport Beach, which she found even less stimulating.

But it was her sister’s birth that set Pressly on the right path. Holding that baby in her arms, she had an epiphany.

“I just remember asking myself, ‘What are you doing? You came [to California] for a reason, and you settled for less. You need to do something with your life.”

So with a little prodding from one of her teachers, Pressly bypassed her senior year and jumped to the next step. She set her sights on Orange Coast College.

“They allowed me to take an exam to see if I qualified, and if I passed the test, they would let me go to OCC,” she says. “And I actually did really well. So when I was 17, I started going to OCC instead of [finishing] my senior year.”

She studied sports medicine, psychology, and dance—her mother, a former classical dancer, had introduced her to the art, and Pressly had been a gymnast since childhood. Still, her goal was to break into acting. She just wanted a backup, in case things didn’t work out.

A few more modeling gigs followed— including one that took her to Italy. Then in 1997, at the age of 19 (the same age she got her first tattoo—the words “healthy, strong, and brave” in Japanese script), Pressly landed her first movie role, playing Sally the Waitress in the action thriller Against the Law.

Healthy. Strong. Brave. Pressly had the words inked on her lower back on what she calls “a rebellious day.”

“I never believed in tattoos,” she says. “I always thought you’d never want to put graffiti on the Mona Lisa, so why would you want to put it on your body? Then I went ahead and did it anyway. But I wanted to make sure that whatever I put on my body would not be something that I’d ever get tired of, so ‘healthy, strong, and brave’ is what I came up with.”

There’s hardly a more fitting description of her.

She certainly looks healthy—her gymnastics and dance background are evident in her physique. And seeking independence as a 15-year-old—and eventually succeeding—takes a lot of pluck.

But if you think Pressly feels she’s at the peak of her life, better think again. She’s got a lot more she wants to accomplish—dramatic roles, growing a family. That’s not to say she’s ready to leave the cast of Earl, however: “It’s been the greatest turning point in my career,” she says. “It’s just been amazing being able to work with such incredible cast members.”

While she fears being typecast, she doesn’t dwell on that. She has overcome such obstacles before—with those B-movie, sex kitten roles, for example.

“She’s fearless, which is great, and she’ll try anything—she’s willing to take a big swing, and she always delivers,” Garcia says. “There’s no doubt she could do any form of the medium she put her mind to or got the opportunity to do.”

But acting is only one of the things she has going for her.

“I turned 30 on July 30, I had my son in May, I won my Emmy in September, and I launched my new [fashion] collection in October—it’s been the most incredible time,” she says.

She loves being a mom and looks forward to having more children—which might just take her down another path.

“I don’t see that happening until I’m 35 or 36, though,” she says. “I’ll have another kid if not two by then, and I’ll probably want to take a step back to enjoy motherhood. It’s just the greatest thing that’s ever happened.”

And few jobs impact the world more than parenting—the act of spawning new life and helping shape the character of a child who will, with any luck, become a positive force in society. Now that makes for some good karma.

Jaime Pressly, all grown up
The ‘My Name Is Earl’ actress says turning 30, becoming a mom and winning an Emmy have helped earn her the respect she’s been working for all her life.

By Choire Sicha, LOS ANGELES TIMES, November 11, 2007

JAIME PRESSLY won the 2007 Emmy for best supporting actress in a comedy series for NBC’s “My Name Is Earl.” She had her first child this spring, and her fashion line, J’aime, is 5 years old.

It’s intriguing when actors branch out.
It’s not as intriguing when people branch out because they’ve licensed things out. It’s more intriguing to me when people go out and do things on their own. [J'aime] is funded solely by me — there are no private investors, I didn’t go to school for this. I know what I want, I think I know what women want in clothes, designs and fit. I want a line that every woman can wear. And clothes that were affordable. Couture, people can’t afford. People like me borrow it and give it back!

Are you getting that thing where you start to feel younger as you age?

Yes and no! I wasn’t afraid to turn 30, I was excited. It makes you feel like a new woman and a woman in general. It makes people take you more seriously. Same thing happens when you have a child. On the other hand, the lack of sleep — the jobs, my son, that kind of thing — makes you feel old.

Before 30, did people take you less seriously? Was it a problem that you’d posed for magazines like Maxim?

That was when Maxim came about, in my 20s — and Stuff magazine. That’s when it became like, the new thing, the men’s magazine that wasn’t Playboy. It had great articles, the photographs were beautiful, the women were beautiful. It was OK for that point in my life. . . . Now, instead of doing those magazines, and I have a lot of respect for those magazines because they did well when I was in my 20s, now it’s GQ and Esquire. You step it up! Just like with my clothing line and the baby and winning an Emmy. Hard work pays off.

Oh! You’re a businesswoman!

Definitely a businesswoman! I thoroughly enjoy that aspect of it.

The flighty artist thing, actresses flapping their hands and talking about art, seems boring and somehow sexist.

It’s obnoxious. It really is. It’s like, enough already, you know? Too many people want to get rich and famous and do it quick. . . . To get anywhere you have to be focused, ambitious, headstrong and really, really want it. It won’t come on a silver platter, and it won’t last long.

I assume you’re moderately wealthy. Do you stop at a certain point?

I think you stop and slow down and be a mom full-time and be able to appreciate all the hard work you did. And not the money you made, but the things that came along with the success. When you’re busy working, you don’t stop and smell the roses, right? When you become a machine, you go do your job and be a mom and then you go to work and then you go to bed and do it all over again. There comes a point in time when you pull a Demi, when you move outside of the spotlight and live your life away from it. You appreciate the things you worked so hard for. But you have to get to that point.

Will you know when that point comes?

Absolutely. I’m very aware of myself, my surroundings and my position. You know, where I stand. And that has to do with the people I’m surrounded by. I have real friends, from when I was 5 or in high school. My manager I’ve been with for 13 years. My team of girls at the clothing line has been there from the beginning. We all believe in a common goal. I’ll work really hard, wearing 10, 15 hats, whatever it takes to bring everything to fruition. And I respect them as much as they respect me. That’s the reason it works and the reason they still believe.

But do people still see you as a 21-year-old girl? That seems like the damaging thing that happens to a lot of actresses.

I started 13 years ago — there’s girls who started when they were 10, 9, and once they became 16 or 18 or 21, no one wanted them to grow up. They went leaps and bounds beyond what they need to do, whether a photo shoot because they wanted to show they weren’t a little girl any more, or they go rebel, and say they can do whatever they want — “I’m an adult.”

Our business has a way of putting you in a closet and locking you in, and after a while you get claustrophobic. You kick the door down and you come out with a vengeance. . . . That’s what happens with everyone who grows up in the business. They feel like they’re being yelled at. They think of what they’re going to do to prove you wrong. And they say the wrong thing and make the wrong move and regret it. But had they not been pushed, they may not have been that way. If we would support each other and support other celebrities — and if the press would support people long enough to grow up and try new things without pigeonholing them — things might be a lot easier.

From The Los Angeles Times

‘Earl’ Star Debuts Expanded Clothing Line at LA Fashion Week

By Lisa Claustro, BUDDY TV, October 18, 2007

Jaime Pressly, who took home the Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress last month for her work on My Name is Earl, has reached another career milestone. On Monday, Pressly debuted her newly expanded contemporary collection from her two-year-old clothing line, J’aime.

Originally, Pressly’s clothing line consisted of a simple knit collection, but has now expanded to include ready-to-wear items made from an array of fabrics, such as washed linen, cotton voile, stretch cotton sateen, chiffon and eyelet. Further marking the growth of her clothing company, Pressly recruited European designer Renee Bardot to help bring her visions to life.

Pressly’s J’aime, which is French for “I Love,” now boasts of such items as flowing dresses with satin braiding satin braiding, well-tailored pants suits, short shorts and feminine tops. In making the new collection, Jaime Pressly said that as with her original line, the main goal was to create fashion that would suit all women.

“The collection, as always, was designed first and foremost to fit and flatter the body of every woman.” Pressly said. “My goal is to design clothes that make women look and feel confident.”

On the second night of LA Fashion Week, Pressly was beaming with pride as models paraded her new collection down the runway. Her My Name is Earl co-stars Jason Lee, Ethan Suplee, Eddie Steeples and Giovanni Ribisi were present at the event, along with friend Nicky Hilton, who had a show for her Chick clothing line over the weekend, and Hilton’s boyfriend, David Katzenberg.

LA Fashion week is an exclusive, invitation only event benefiting St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. This year, the city’s fashion extravaganza kicked off on Sunday, October 14, and will conclude on Thursday, October 18.

Fans who are interested in Jaime Pressly’s new and improved clothing line can log on to www.jaimeclothing.com. Meanwhile, viewers can catch more of the Emmy-award winning actress as Joy Turner on My Name is Earl by tuning in every Thursday night at 8pm on NBC.

From Buddy TV

Pressly is ready for slapstick
By Mike Hughes, GANNETT NEWS SERVICE, September 22, 2007

Some moves seem terribly logical after they happen. One was making Jaime Pressly a situation-comedy star.

These days, Pressly savors her “My Name is Earl” role. She plays Joy, sexy, selfish and single-minded.

“She’s very strong-minded and says what she’s thinking,” Pressly says. “That’s just the way Joy is.”

Pressly has mastered her persona. That includes a generic accent because the producers didn’t want a specific locale.

In each of the first two seasons, she’s had Emmy nominations as best supporting actress in a comedy. (She was a winner Sept. 16.)

It’s also new turf for her. Pressly’s first two series — “Push” and “Jack & Jill” — were angst-filled dramas; “Earl” is closer to her natural state.

“I come from a very funny family,” she says. “All the Pressly men were funny.”

They were businessmen in Kinston, N.C., but they knew how to have fun.

“My dad would tell these great stories, where every character had a different accent . . . We laughed at each other, all day,” she says.

What she took seriously was dancing, modeling and acting. Pressly ended up in a lot of crime-show episodes.

Then came the “Earl” script.

“It read like an independent short,” Pressly recalls. “I said, “This is not going to make it unless it has an amazing Earl.’ ”

It has one in Jason Lee. Pressly, however, is the one with the Emmy nominations.

In the first season, “Earl” won Emmys for the writing, directing and casting of its pilot and for the editing of another episode. Pressly was the show’s only nominated actor.

In the second season, it had two nominations for guest stars (Beau Bridges and Giovanni Ribisi), two for editing and one for sound-mixing. Pressly was the only nominated regular.

“Earl” may not win enough Emmys, but it would win any contest involving body balance. Lee is a former skateboard champion; Pressly is a former dancer and gymnast.

Last season, she had to hold off on the sight gags because she was pregnant. Pressly says she and her fiance, Eric Cubiche, planned that as precisely as possible. Their son, Dezi, was born May 11, shortly after the season was done.

From the Ashbury Park Press