Foyt, Victoria

PERSONAL:

Born in FL; married Henry Jaglom (a film director), 1991 (separated); children: Sabrina, Simon. Education: University of Miami, B.A; attended UCLA Extension; studied acting with Geraldine Baron. Hobbies and other interests: Tennis, salsa dancing.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Santa Monica, CA. E-mail—victoriaweb@mac.com.

CAREER:

Actor, screenwriter, and director. Director of AFI short film The Sweet Spot, among others.

WRITINGS:

The Virtual Life of Lexie Diamond, HarperTempest (New York, NY), 2007.

Author of screenplay for film The Sweet Spot; coauthor, with Henry Jaglom, of screenplays Going Shopping, Déjà vu, Last Summer in the Hamptons, Baby Fever, and Festival in Cannes. Contributor of articles to periodicals, including Harper's Bazaar, O at Home, and Film & Video Production.

SIDELIGHTS:

Actor and screenwriter Victoria Foyt is best known for her collaborations with independent film director Henry Jaglom. Working with Jaglom, she has written and starred in several films, among them Baby Fever, Last Summer in the Hamptons, Déjà vu, and Going Shopping. Jeff Shannon, a film critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, opined that Foyt's collaborations with Jaglom resulted in the director's most accessible works, commenting: "It's beginning to look like Victoria Foyt is the best thing that ever happened to Henry Jaglom." In 2007, Foyt turned from screenwriting to prose in her first young-adult novel, The Virtual Life of Lexie Diamond.

In The Virtual Life of Lexie Diamond, a self-proclaimed teenaged "gearhead" struggles to solve her mother's murder. Lexie is the only person who suspects that her mother's car accident may have been foul play. As her father quickly involves himself with a new girlfriend, the teen feels emotionally cut off from the physical world, so she turns to the virtual world to find companionship. Online, she gains allies to help her solve the mystery of her mother's death, but these "friends" may not be what they seem. Ultimately, her online friend Webrider may just end up being a Web "surfer," proving that maybe, despite Lexie's initial belief, surfers and gearheads can mix.

The Virtual Life of Lexie Diamond crosses technology with the paranormal: Lexie has an uncanny ability to read people, and she senses something is not quite right with her father's girlfriend. On top of that, the president of the school's Virtual Club seems to have developed a program to allow users to connect with lost loved ones beyond death. "The style of the novel is a clever mix of e-mails, Lexie's vivid imagination, and the eerie sense that soul and spirit may be caught up in computer energy," explained Janis Flint-Ferguson in Kliatt. A Kirkus Reviews contributor noted of Foyt that "in Lexie she creates an appealingly sullen adolescent to whom cyberspace is the key to a realer Reality," and School Library Journal contributor Christi Voth concluded that "Lexie's internal dialogue and unique spiritual perspective make her a fascinating central character."

On the Lexie Diamond Web site, Foyt gave the following advice to young authors: "Nothing is more boring in art than pretension and nothing is more exciting than honesty!" The site also includes a short film inspired by the novel that the author wrote and directed.