Aubrey Plaza is devastated by the death of her husband, director Jeff Baena

Known for Life after Beth and The Good Sisters, he also co-wrote J'adore Huckabees, with David O. Russell.

“This is an unimaginable tragedy. We are deeply grateful to everyone who has supported us. We ask that you respect our privacy during this time.”

The actress and director Aubrey Plaza was expected at the Golden Globes this weekend, but she was unable to go to the ceremony, shortly after her husband's suicide, Jeff Baena. At the age of 47, the American director was found dead at their home on January 3. The medical examiner has since announced that he committed suicide by hanging.

Dane DeHaan and Aubrey Plaza in Life After Beth

A tragedy which hits his wife hard, with whom he worked regularly since their meeting in 2001, and their marriage ten years later. At the heart of his first film as a director, Life After Beth (2014), she also played in Bachelor Party (2016), The Good Sisters (2017) and Spin Me Round (2022). When she wanted to move on to directing, the actress did so in an anthology supervised by Baena, Cinema Toastbroadcast on Showtime in 2021. A project with an original concept: surrounded by other directors (Jay Duplass, David Lowery and Alex Ross Perry also participated), they recovered extracts from works that have fallen into the public domain to tell untold stories, narrated by contemporary actors such as Christina Ricci, Dan Stevens, Nick Offerman, Christopher Meloni…

“It was great, she told People magazine that year. It was also very hectic because when we were working on the show, we were in the middle of lockdown. Our house became a strange post-production setup at this time: he was downstairs on Zoom or on his writing sessions, and I was upstairs editing, we came and went. This collaboration suited us well. We didn't learn how to make sourdough bread, but we would sift through hours of classic films, choose sequences, and put them together together, letting our minds wander. It was so good.”

Alison Briethe star of the series Communitywho collaborated with him several times (they notably co-wrote the thriller Horse Girl for Netflix And Spin Me Round), also paid tribute to him, by sharing beautiful photos of their joint projects accompanied by the comment: “Rest in peace, my friend.”

Before becoming a director, Jeff Baena took film courses at New York University, then he became a production assistant with Robert Zemeckis. At the turn of the 2000s, working alongside him on Alone in the world And Appearances. He then co-wrote I love Huckabees with David O. Russell, released in 2004.

What is Horse Girl, the Netflix film with Alison Brie, worth? [critique]