Director Jeff Baena has reportedly been found dead in Los Angeles(Picture: Andrew Toth/Getty Images for Stella Artois)
Filmmaker Jeff Baena, husband to actress Aubrey Plaza, has reportedly died at 47.
The director was best known for films like Life After Beth and The Little Hours.
According to TMZ, Los Angeles police and fire got a call from an assistant on Friday around 10:30 AM.
Arriving on the scene, they discovered Baena dead in an LA area home believed to belong to the couple.
Plaza – known for shows like Parks and Rec and White Lotus – married Baena in 2021 after the pair had been together for a decade.
He was also known for films like Joshy (2016), Horse Girl (2020), Spin Me Round (2022), and for co-writing I Heart Huckabees (2004).
Plaza and Baena tied the knot in 2021 (Picture: George Pimentel/Getty Images for Sundance Film Festival)
He frequently collaborated with actress Alison Brie as well as his wife, who he worked with on Life After Beth and other projects.
His latest film, Spin Me Round, was a comedy starring Plaza, Brie, Debby Ryan, and Molly Shannon.
Baena was born and raised in Miami before attending film school at New York University. He later moved to Los Angeles to pursue directing, though he got his start as a writer.
Baena’s latest film starred his wife, Molly Shannon, and Alison Brie (Picture: Eric Charbonneau/REX/Shutterstock)
When asked about his directorial debut, writing and directing zombie film Life After Beth, Baena told Seensome in 2014: ‘It’s all I ever want to do; it felt really comfortable and fun.
‘I’ve been a writer for twelve years now and it was always a means to an end, I never wanted to be a writer, I wanted to be a director so this was always my intention and it felt right.’
Baena often credited actor Kurt Russell with helping to kickstart his career after a minor car accident while working as Russell’s assistant led to the pair falling into deep conversation.
He had gotten a small piece of debris in his eye during the accident, and as Russell stepped in to help care for him, they got to talking about filmmaking.
This led to a collaboration that took Baena from an assistant to a screenwriter, as he eventually cowrote I Heart Huckabees with Russell.
Baena and Plaza were a very private couple by Hollywood standards, with Plaza only announcing their marriage in an Instagram post in 2021.
Plaza and Baena were together for nearly 10 years before they were married (Picture: Alberto E. Rodriguez/WireImage)
Plaza has previously publicly praised her supportive husband, telling People: ‘I think that when you’re with someone that is in your field, they understand what you’re dealing with on a deeper level.
‘So obviously you are able to support each other and really understand kind of the journey that we’re both on.’
Metro reached out to LAPD for comment.
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