Saving the life of a baby calf born in breach at 4am in the morning.
About: Jacqui de Jong
Swedish-Australian actress Jacqui de Jong’s unconventional journey began in the rural heart of Australia and led to the bright lights of Manhattan.
From Farm to Stage: An Unconventional Journey
At thirteen, Jacqui de Jong packed her life into a suitcase and left her family’s working farm in East Gippsland, Australia. Armed with hard-earned academic scholarships and the kind of determination forged by drought, bushfire, and dawn starts, she traded muddy boots for boarding school uniforms—the first step in an extraordinary journey that would lead from rural Australia to the stages of New York City.
Jacqui feeding out cattle with her brother.
Jacqui and her Yamaha XL 250 Farm Motorbike.
2019/2020 Australian Black Summer bushfires approaching the farm.
The Foundation: East Gippsland
Growing up on a working farm with its own mechanical workshop shaped everything. Between the eucalyptus forests and endless horizons of rural Victoria, Jacqui learned to rebuild fences torched by bushfires, save the lives of baby calves during breach births, and operate machinery that most city kids only see in museums.
Straining fence wires to rebuild after the 2019/2020 Australian Black Summer bushfires with farmhand.
Digging fence post holes after the 2019/2020 Australian Black Summer bushfires with farmhand.
Swimming in farm dams, riding dirt bikes through paddocks, and working alongside her father in the workshop—this was her classroom before any formal education.
But even while moving cattle and mending fences, she was composing stories in her head, finding rhythm in the rain on corrugated iron, drama in the seasonal cycles of farm life.
Responding to an emergency situation.
Counting cattle from the top of the fence.
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University, United Kingdom.
Academic brilliance became Jacqui’s ticket out—not because she wanted to escape, but because her creative spirit demanded broader horizons. Those elite boarding schools she earned her way into introduced her to classical piano (which she mastered to concert level) and literature that gave voice to what she’d always felt. This path eventually led to Cambridge University, where she studied Shakespeare and discovered that the emotional truths she’d witnessed in rural Australia were universal.
The Leap: Scholarships and Shakespeare
The Craft: Method and Multilingual
Now based in New York City and trained in the Strasberg Method by David Gideon, Jacqui brings something rare to her roles: genuine lived experience. Fluent in Japanese, authorized to work across three continents (US, EU, and Australia), and equally comfortable discussing Chekhov or carburetor repair, she embodies a kind of versatility that can’t be taught—only lived.
Her vintage-inspired aesthetic, featured in Forbes, isn’t costume but autobiography—inspired by treasures discovered in her grandmother’s farmhouse and refined through years of international modeling work.
The Artist Today
Whether embodying complex characters on screen, walking runways during Fashion Week, or bringing unexpected depth to commercial campaigns, Jacqui proves that authenticity is the ultimate artistic weapon. She’s the girl who can drive a tractor and deliver Shakespeare, who speaks Japanese with Swedish-Australian inflection, who knows that real strength comes from surviving both literal and metaphorical storms.
Her performances carry the weight of someone who’s rebuilt after devastation, the grace of classical training, and the fearlessness of a farm kid who learned early that if something needs doing, you figure it out and do it yourself.
Professional Representation:
Theatrical: Dulcina Eisen Associates
Commercial: Tracy Goldblum & Doug Kesten, Brady, Brannon & Rich
Management: Ami Manning, Volition Entertainment