Editor’s Note: Help is available if you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or mental health matters. In the US, call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
Globally, the International Association for Suicide Prevention and Befrienders Worldwide have contact information for crisis centers around the world.
A cause of death for writer and director Jeff Baena, whose credits include “Life After Beth” and “The Little Hours,” has been determined.
Baena was found deceased last week at his home in Los Angeles. He died by suicide, according to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner. Baena was 47.
He and Plaza married in 2021 and the two had worked on several projects together, including the 2014’s horror-comedy “Life After Beth” and the 2017 historical comedy “The Little Hours.”
More recently, the couple collaborated on the 2021 comedy series “Cinema Toast,” and the 2022 film “Spin Me Round.”
Plaza had been scheduled to be a presenter at Sunday night’s Golden Globe Awards but did not attend. Director Brady Corbet acknowledged the tragedy at the event, when he accepting an award for “The Brutalist”
“Finally, tonight my heart is with Aubrey Plaza and Jeff’s family,” Corbet said at the end of his acceptance speech.
Plaza and Baena had been a couple since 2011 and she talked to People in 2021 about how the Covid-19 pandemic had strengthened their relationship.
“We were quarantined for months and months like everybody else,” she said at the time. “And we did enjoy it. I think it was, obviously other than all of the catastrophic things happening in the world, just on a personal level, relationship level, was kind of nice to just be forced to be in one place for that long.”
Her husband is known for co-writing the acclaimed 2004 film “I Heart Huckabees,” which featured Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin, and for writing and directing the 2016 dramedy “Joshy” starring Thomas Middleditch.
Baena co-wrote “Horse Girl” with the film’s star, Alison Brie, and also directed it. Prior to the 2020 release, he participated in an “Ask Us Anything” session with Reddit users and talked about what inspired the film.
“Alison and I both have had family members who have had mental illness, and it was a major influence on working on this,” he said.
His first stepmother, he wrote, had struggled with manic depression. Baena responded to a Reddit user’s question as to whether the film was a statement about how the healthcare system “failing” those with mental health issues.
“While I would not consider ‘Horse Girl’ to be an activist film, the themes of how we as a society and individuals treat persons with mental illness was a major focus and impetus for making this,” Baena wrote.
Several stars who had worked with Baena publicly mourned him.
“SNL” alum Molly Shannon, who starred in four of his films, including his 2014 directorial debut “Life After Beth,” posted an undated photo with him on social media with a broken heart emoji.