Columbia student Beau Jessup, daughter of actress Lisa Maxwell, dies at 27 - USA Today
Beau Jessup, the 27-year-old daughter of British actress and TV host Lisa Maxwell, has died.
Jessup's death was announced by her university department, Columbia School of Journalism, where Jessup was pursuing a postgraduate degree and would have graduated in May with a master of science in journalism. The university did not share a cause of death.
"Columbia Journalism School mourns the loss of Beau Jessup, a student in our M.S. program," the department shared in a statement Monday, Nov. 9. "The J-School is working with Beau's family to offer support and assistance during this difficult time."
With permission from her family, the department shared a previous interview with Jessup, "in memory of her far-too-brief life and experience at Columbia and in New York City."
In the interview, which had not been released before news of Jessup's death, she told Columbia News in October that she was interested in "cultural journalism, particularly how institutions, identity, and social expectations influence the way we live and understand one another."
She said being the daughter of a television actress influenced how she saw the world.
"I grew up with an unusual awareness of the distance between peopleβs lives and the stories told about them," Jessup said. "I saw how journalism could illuminate someone's experiences, but also how those experiences could be distorted, simplified, or transformed into a public narrative over which the subject had very little control."
Jessup had previously written the weekly column Beau's Community Bakes for her local English paper, and had launched the website SpecialName, a website that helped Chinese parents choose English names for their children.
Jessup's mother, Lisa Maxwell, is best known for her role in the British police procedural "The Bill," as a former panelist on ITV's "Loose Women" and as the voice of Kira in Jim Henson's "The Dark Crystal." She also briefly starred in the BBC One soap opera "EastEnders," among other regular English television appearances. Maxwell shared Jessup with husband Paul Jessup, whom she married in 2014. They had one child.
