There once was a time when Jaime King was a household name, only back then many still actually knew her as James King, a name she used so as to not be confused with another model. That time was somewhere around the early to mid-2000s. After bursting on the modeling scene, by the age of 15 she had already been featured in magazines like Vogue, Mademoiselle and Allure.
Then King decided to try her hand at acting. In 1999, she appeared in her first film, Happy Campers, but it was her role as nurse Betty in Pearl Harbor that started to get her noticed as an actress. Something that was further cemented when she played twins in the film adaptation of Sin City.
Unfortunately, her acting career eventually kind of fizzled with a long series of unmemorable films and she dropped off most people’s radar for the better part of a decade until reappearing in a starring role on The CW show Hart of Dixie, that I assume most of you did not watch (though it did have its moments), where she worked from 2011 to 2015 alongside another big star of the 2000s Rachel Bilson.
Now King, at age 38, appears to be trying to restart her career one more time with a new photo shoot and article she wrote for Galore magazine that is anything but unmemorable. You will see why in a moment.
Here’s a little bit of what she had to say…
I’ve been rebellious my entire life because I realized I wasn’t going to fit into anybody’s mold. Rebellion can have a negative connotation but to me it’s about saying I’m going to do whatever it takes to learn everything I can, to experience life and every single facet of it by trying different things.
The rebels are the ones changing this world. Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, John Lennon, Gloria Steinem — they were rebels who had a vision and a dream that was so much greater than what people could understand at that time. And they got into trouble quite often, but they were able to change this planet.
I’ve always felt masculine and feminine. I love men and I’ve chosen to be in a heterosexual marriage, but I’ve been in relationships with women and I love women, too.
I was called James at the start of my career because my mom called me that as a kid. I’ve always identified more with James than Jaime. I didn’t just want to be a girl or woman and I didn’t want to be a man. There’s no vocabulary for what I identify with. We’re all trying to find the words for such a complex thing. With more people expressing who they are, it’s so much healthier and so much better.
And here are the photos…
