Jessica Goldstein King


We were very saddened to learn that that Jessica Goldstein, one of our interviewees and wife of Brian King, passed away yesterday, Feb. 7.   Not long after we interviewed Jessica and Brian in early 2010, she was diagnosed with cancer.

The Over 50 team and community extend our deepest sympathy to Jessica’s family.

In their video interview, Jessica and Brian speak eloquently about unemployment.  Both Brian and Jessica lost their jobs in 2009 as a consequence of the Great Recession.

For a broader perspective on Jessica’s rich life, here is an excerpt from the Theatre Puget Sound blog about Jessica:


Jess passed away early this morning at her home in New York after a valiant fight with an extremely aggressive and deadly cancer.  With her were family including her beloved husband Brian and their son Jonah.  Her life in art was diversified, rich and full and I can offer only a fragment of it.  Again, I hope you will find a way to present a fuller description of this most amazing human being but here are some items from my personal store of memories.

Having studied with  Sanford Meisner, I consider Jessica one of the finest and most effective practitioners of the Meisner technique there was; she taught its pure form with great passion, devotion and integrity.   She taught acting to hundreds of people at Freehold and beyond and held popular audition clinics where she often matched students to monologues from the hundreds of plays lining her office with uncanny accuracy.

As an actress, she was a commanding presence and wonderful to work with (Scotland Road, the Empty Space, 1996).   Offstage, she was one of the funniest people in the world with  her New York edge (including hilarious mock-Yiddish delivered in an old cocker’s voice);  she was just so specific she could nail a situation or a personality with absolutely le mot juste.  Jessica never made a big deal of it, but she was also a great, great beauty with the most arresting face and blazing, penetrating eyes.   Her voice was amazing, powerful and deep it would gather into a huge rolling laugh that was worth being funny for.

What always amazed me was her generosity, her ability to accept people as they were and her boundless boundless capacity to love.

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