Jeff Baena, Writer-Director and Aubrey Plaza’s Husband, Dead at 47

Jeff Baena, the writer-director of indie films like Life After Beth and Horse Girl and husband of actress Aubrey Plaza, has died at the age of 47.

TMZ first reported that police responded to a death investigation at a Los Angeles home on Friday morning, with Baena pronounced dead at the scene. The Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office confirmed Baena’s death to Variety; no cause of death was provided.

Baena started in the film industry to an assistant to directors like Robert Zemeckis and David O. Russell, with Baena co-writing the screenplay for 2004’s I Heart Huckabees with the latter.

In 2014, Baena made his directorial debut with the zombie comedy Life After Beth, which starred his then-girlfriend Plaza; in 2021, the actress revealed that she and Baena had married after a decade of dating.

Baena’s other films include 2016’s Joshy and three movies he made in collaboration with actress Alison Brie: 2017’s The Little Hours (which also co-starred Plaza), 2020’s Horse Girl, and his most recent feature, 2022’s Spin Me Round.

“Baena, who co-wrote the script with Brie, has always been someone who throws a bit of a curve in his pitches — this is the guy who penned I Heart Huckabees, and has directed both a zombie love story (Life After Beth) and a left-field adaptation of Boccaccio’s The Decameron (The Little Hours),” Rolling Stone wrote in its review for Horse Girl. “But the longer Horse Girl lets you spend inside this young woman’s dissociative state of mind, the more you feel your own grasp on the narrative begin to fracture.”