Danyi Deats
Nude

At ten years old, Danyi Deats was an alien. Or rather, she played one in Steven Spielberg’s classic flick Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). For her next role, audiences got to see a more human version of her, as well as a grown-up one—although also a dead one. She played Jamie in the cult classic River’s Edge (1987) with Crispin Glover, Keanu Reeves, and Ione Skye, all young and hot and grossly obsessed with a nude dead girl by the (yup!) river’s edge; that nakedness belongs to Danyi, who wears only cloudy eyes and a few stray bugs and leaves. She had two other big on-screen roles, one as a junkie in The Allnighter (1987) with The Bangles’ Susanna Hoffs, and a recurring one as Atomic Waitress in the primetime TV series Hard Copy in 1987. While Danyi’s acting credits end here, her career in Hollywood has been far from over. Switching to the other side of the camera, she became a producer in 1993, and has primarily worked with music sensations on their music videos. She has counted among her clients Selena, Usher, Monica, Bryan Adams, Tina Turner, Rob Zombie, Sting, Shania Twain, Elvis Costello, Kelly Clarkson, Calvin Harris, Jennifer Lopez, Demi Lovato, Stevie Nicks, Kid Cudi, and tons of others, and has produced well-known songs like Backstreet Boys’ “Everybody” (1997), Sugar Ray’s “Someday” (1999), “Thong Song” (2000) by Sisqó, and “Work It” (2003) by Nelly ft. Justin Timberlake, then she took a break from 2006-2013 and went right back to it with Ed Sheerhan’s “Photograph” (2015) (plus four of his other songs), Selena Gomez’s “Same Old Love” (2015), “Strangers” (2018) by Halsey ft. Lauren Jauregui, and Lizzo’s “Good as Hell” (2019). Impressive, Danyi. More even than the dead-girl antics by the river.