Brigid O'Connell
- Additional Crew
- Actress
- Producer
Brigid O'Connell was born in Newton, Massachusetts on March 5, 1983 to an audio engineer and a trade show Consultant. She began acting at age eleven, studying improvisation in Jamaica Plain, a neighborhood in Boston.
In 1997 she moved to Stratham, New Hampshire and attended high school at Berwick Academy in South Berwick, Maine. She participated in the school's theatrical productions of Brigadoon, On the Town, Hello, Dolly! and Fiddler on the Roof.
After graduating in 2001, Brigid studied at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey where she double majored in French and Psychology and participated as an NCAA athlete on the softball team. She spent a semester living in Grenoble, France where she completed requirements for her French degree at the age of 20.
In her final year at Drew she performed in the school's production of The Vagina Monologues and wrote an Honors Thesis in French entitled La Scholarisation des Enfants en France. After defending her 60-page thesis in French, Brigid earned Honors.
The fall after graduating Magna Cum Laude with Honors, Brigid moved to Manhattan and lived in Hell's Kitchen for a year and the Upper East Side for a year and a half. She worked for two seasons at the Tribeca Film Festival in the Special Projects department. With her team of 7 freelance employees, Brigid helped plan, execute and manage 31 events over the 10-day Festivals in 2006 and 2007.
In August of 2007, there was a tornado that hit Brooklyn, wiping out power and shutting down 90 percent of the NYC subway system. Brigid was working that day as a Production Assistant on an Internet commercial and hustled to make her call time by sharing a cab with a stranger towards downtown, walking over the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan and walking another mile and a half to the location. She worked a 14 hour day in a small coffee shop powered by generators (and no air conditioning) and loved it.
In December 2007, Brigid had a dream she should move to Hawaii, so she took action and bought a one-way ticket for the following March. Before flying to Hawaii, Brigid searched Craig's List for work as a Production Assistant and sent an email and her resume to a post that responded to her 8 days after she landed on the island. It was to work on the ABC series LOST as a PA. She worked one day on season 4 and was trained to run base camp for Second Unit on season 5 and was moved up to First Unit for the sixth and final season.
When the show wrapped in 2010, Brigid moved to Los Angeles where she was hired by one of the Assistant Directors on LOST to work as a Production Assistant on the feature film Bridesmaids. Having worked for three years as a PA, Brigid decided that her life-long passion of performing was the direction in which she wanted to head, so she began auditioning for student films and independent projects in LA. She booked 5 of her first 6 auditions, including a role on an Internet show, which gave her SAG eligibility. She joined the Union in 2011 and began studying improv at the Groundlings School in Los Angeles. That year, the AD team who worked on Bridesmaids hired Brigid to work as the Stand-In for Maude Apatow on the feature film This is 40.
Brigid continued to audition and work (shooting several independent shorts, New Media shows and a Guest Star role on a cable network) in Los Angeles until 2013 when she gave birth to a baby girl and moved with her husband to a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee. The following year she signed with an agency in Nashville and began studying with Caroline Locorriere at Nashville Acting Studio. In 2015, she booked an Industrial, a Principal role in an independent feature film and a Principal role on a web series currently being submitted to Festivals around the country.