If you were alive in 1995 (and I realize that a significant portion of my readership was not, which is kind of mind-boggling) and a consumer of pornography/erotica (which I no longer am) you are probably familiar with the model-actress Jacqueline Lovell, who worked primarily under the sobriquet Sara St. James. The year of her debut she was awarded the title “most photographed model” which is certainly a promising way to begin one’s career.

From there she progressed to commercials, background work (including films like Forrest Gump) television shows, and B movies, especially for Charles Band’s Full Moon and Surrender Cinema studio, who put her in everything they could. (Her best role probably being Loretta in Head of the Family or Sun in Femalien.) This is actually how I was introduced to her ahem copious acting talents. In all seriousness there was something about her that made her stand out from the crowd, and it wasn’t T&A or her ability to do a shitty southern accent.

After reaching the pinnacle (a couple Zalman King flicks) she stopped taking what she described as “sexploitation roles” where she had to “strip naked every 15 minutes” and relocated to New York City where she enrolled in acting classes and began appearing in the various Law & Order spin-offs, more crowd and body double work, and … that was pretty much it. (Actually, while putting this together I found her SAG-AFTRA page and she has done a lot more movie and television work than I thought, some of it quite recent. Good for her.)

She disappeared in the early 2000s, which spawned a bunch of rumors on various forums and websites. As it turned out, she met auteur Edward Nyahay in 1999 (whom she married later that year), moved to Florida where he had a bunch of family who helped raise their daughter, and eventually returned to California where she had grown up. In addition to Zyla Faustina Pelagia Nyahay the couple’s relationship proved incredibly fruitful, as they made a number of short and long-form films, released several albums together, wrote for and edited numerous industry magazines, and were active members of LA’s art scene, until 2023 when Zyla was hospitalized with a rare form of cancer, contracted several viruses and became septic, which she succumbed to on December 21.

Although Jacqueline Lovell stopped blogging and scrubbed the various personal websites she had maintained since the 2010s from the ‘net, this tragedy does not seem to have affected her faith which she had rediscovered after meeting Edward, having previously abandoned it after a difficult stint in the California foster care system. In fact the couple describe themselves as dual faith Byzantine Catholics and Occultists, which is reflected in a lot of their independent movies and music projects such as Krush the Serpent (which is about a grieving widow who makes a pilgrimage to Amsterdam to visit the shrine of Our Lady of All Nations which was largely filmed on the fly, dodging the authorities since they lacked the requisite permits) and Forest Bathing: Friends W/Benefits (which is about the Japanese therapeutic practice 森林浴 or shinrin-yoku) an episode of which featured the Archangel Zadkiel amid the usual nudity and long, artsy shots of the California wilderness.

Jacqueline currently describes herself as an Oracle, “shekinah of the Divine Feminine” and a “light-worker” which a lot of the music she makes with Edward Nyahay seems to be about, as you can tell from this song “Seidr Shift.” She has certainly come a long way from Hideous! in which she played a topless criminal in a gorilla mask (I’m sure there was more to the plot, but that’s honestly all I remember) though I’m not sure that’s what she imagined when she sought to expand her artistic œuvre.