Jodi Lyn O'Keefe

Jodi Lyn O'Keefe
Jodi Lyn O'Keefe at Los Angeles Fashion Week, Smashbox Studios, Culver City on March 9, 2008
Born	(1978-10-10) October 10, 1978 (age 38) Cliffwood Beach, New Jersey, United States
Other names	Jodi O'Keefe
Occupation	Actress, model, fashion designer
Years active	1995–present

Jodi Lyn O'Keefe (born October 10, 1978) is an American actress and model, who at age 17 began portraying Cassidy Bridges on Nash Bridges. She is also known for her role on Prison Break as Gretchen Morgan, a.k.a. "Susan B. Anthony", and as Josette "Jo" Laughlin in The Vampire Diaries.

O'Keefe was born in Cliffwood Beach, New Jersey, the daughter of Noreen, a homemaker, and Jack O'Keefe, a director of labor relations for Merck. She has Czech, Irish, Polish, Swedish and Austrian ancestry. O'Keefe has two older sisters, Jenna and Heather.

O'Keefe started her career as a model at the age of 8 years old, and she did some modeling work for a Jeans company. Midway through her junior year of high school, O'Keefe left school to star on the soap opera Another World, playing Marguerite “Maggie” Cory. She then got a role on Nash Bridges playing Cassidy, the daughter of Don Johnson’s title character. She and her mother moved to Hollywood so O'Keefe completed her schooling by mail. When she was 17 she had an affair with Don Johnson.

O'Keefe made her big screen debut in 1998 in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later and later starred in such films as The Crow: Salvation,Whatever It Takes and Devil In The Flesh 2. In 1999, she co-starred in the teen film She's All That (1999) as Taylor Vaughan alongside Freddie Prinze Jr. and Rachael Leigh Cook. When asked if it was hard to play her character, a high school prima donna, she replied, “Everybody knew a Taylor Vaughan in high school. Working in show business, you meet girls like that every day.”