Jewel Staite was born Jewel Belair Staite on June 2, 1982 in White Rock, British Columbia. She spent the first three years of her life in Maui, Hawaii before her family moved to Vancouver. She started modeling at age six and first appeared in a Safeway commercial. When she was ten, Staite won the Best Actor award at the Houston and Yorkton Festivals, for her work on a Vancouver Film School short film, Meeting Dad. She has since appeared on the Nickelodeon show, Space Cases and the Disney production of Flash Forward. She has also been on television shows like The X-Files, Higher Ground, Da Vinci’s Inquest, Wonderfalls and Stargate: Atlantis.
Kaywinnit Lee Frye, or Kaylee for short, played by Jewel Staite on Firefly, is the resident mechanic aboard the cargo ship, Serenity. Her natural gift became evident when she troubleshot and fixed the problem that had grounded the vessel, barely an hour upon boarding Serenity and without ever having previously been on any other Firefly-class ship. Bright, bubbly, cheerful and optimistic, Kaylee has a genuine passion for the ship, as well as a not-so-secret fondness for Dr. Simon Tam.
(Photo courtesy of FOX)