- published: 04 Jun 2014
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Jaime Elizabeth Pressly (born July 30, 1977) is an American actress and model. She is best known for playing Joy Turner on the NBC sitcom My Name Is Earl, for which she was nominated for two Emmy Awards (winning one) as well as a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She has also appeared in films such as Poison Ivy: The New Seduction, Joe Dirt, DOA: Dead or Alive, and I Love You, Man.
Pressly was born in Kinston, North Carolina, the daughter of Brenda Sue (née Smith), a dance instructor, and James Liston Pressly, a car salesman. She has two siblings: James Liston Pressly, Jr. and Jessica Pressly. She spent more than a decade studying gymnastics and dancing, and later attended Kinston High School in Kinston, North Carolina, where her mother had moved while her parents were going through a divorce.
By age 14, she had appeared on her first cover (Teen Magazine) and had become the official spokesmodel for the International Cover Model Search, and soon after began to get recognition for modeling in the United States, as well as in Italy and Japan. She sought and succeeded in having herself legally emancipated from her parents at the age of 15 so she could travel to Japan, as neither of her parents could make the trip.