Spotlight Academy owner Jacqui Kaese has no shortage of stories and experience in the entertainment industry.
Originally from the United Kingdom, Kaese spent her young adult life as an actor and singer. She has appeared in a number of films including Quadrophenia, which was produced by The Who and was Sting’s first acting gig.
Kaese, along with her band, Zucchi, once performed Lady is a Tramp for then-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at a Conservative Party conference in the mid-1980s.
“It almost got me fired and made national headlines,” Kaese said.
After working as an award-winning nightclub manager in the United Kingdom, she met and married former NHL player Trent Kaese and moved to Nanaimo in the mid-1990s.
It was around that time that Kaese started Spotlight Academy, an acting school whose alumni include the likes of Cameron Bright, Sarah Grey, Colin Ford, Stef Lang and Hannah Jane Zirke.
“It is film without film school. It is acting without acting school. It is for people who can’t afford to move to Vancouver and do three years in a school,” Kaese said. “It is for people who have to work and raise their families but want to work an actor. It is for people who want to pursue their dreams who wouldn’t normally have the money to subsidize themselves. It is for kids like me.”
Throughout her career, Kaese has coached students and worked alongside some of Hollywood’s biggest stars such as Robert DeNiro, Tom Cruise, Jason Statham, Matt Damon, Scarlett Johansson and Nicholas Cage.
In 2004, Kaese spent nearly four months living in New York and coaching Bright, at the personal request of director Jonathan Glazer during the filming of Birth, which starred Nicole Kidman and Lauren Bacall.
The opportunity to watch Kidman work was one of the highlights of Kaese’s professional career and she recalled the time Kidman’s mother arrived on set.
“She would become childlike,” Kaese said. “She would sit with her head on her mother’s shoulder in between takes. I think what was so intriguing about that was that she was so childlike that it was endearing. You can see why the camera loves her. You can see why the roles that she chooses are so fragile and vulnerable and mesmerizing because that is who she was. You couldn’t take your eyes off her. I feel like that is the reason why she is a superstar.”
Jacqui Kaese’s story continues an ongoing feature series profiling Nanaimo residents and their stories.