Shayla Beesley is an American actress best known for her leading role in the 2014 horror thriller Reaper, where she starred opposite genre heavyweights Danny Trejo and Vinnie Jones. Known for her dark, intense screen presence, Beesley has built a career centered around indie thrillers, horror, and off-beat dramatic work.
Early Life
Beesley was born the oldest of four children to Tegan Ollie, a professional belly dancer who passed away in 2012, and Graham Beesley. Raised primarily in Oak Harbor, Washington, she showed an early inclination toward writing and the arts: at age seven she won a Young Authors Award, and at twelve she earned second place in a Veterans of Foreign Wars essay contest.
At Oak Harbor High School she enrolled in drama classes, but her ambitions pulled her further. Beesley legally emancipated herself at age sixteen and moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. There, she trained at both the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute and Playhouse West, grounding her craft in method techniques.
Career
Film
Beesley’s breakout came in the 2006 horror feature Perkins’ 14, selected through an online casting competition. Her performance as Daisy Hopper drew attention for elevating what could have been a stock “rebellious goth girl” role; Fangoria singled out her work as one of the film’s highlights.
At nineteen, she starred in her first feature, Sex and the USA (originally titled Promises), which premiered at the Deauville American Film Festival in 2008.
Her highest-profile film role arrived in Reaper (2014), a supernatural horror film in which she played the lead opposite Trejo and Jones.
That same year, Beesley completed filming Death in the Desert in Las Vegas, directed by Josh Evans and based on the book by Cathy Scott. Beesley portrayed the thinly fictionalized girlfriend of casino heir Ted Binion, a role that paired her with Michael Madsen and Paz de la Huerta.
Television
Beesley starred as Hayden Sayer in HBO’s 2008 short film Trophy. She has also made episodic television appearances, including in Written by a Kid (2012) and a 2013 episode of CSI: NY.
Video
In 2012, she appeared in director Mike Diva’s short film/music video “Kill the Noise (Part 1),” which won MTV Clubland’s Video of the Year.
