Jessica Blank, born in New Haven, Connecticut, is an American actress, playwright, and novelist who has appeared in film, television, and theater. She has appeared in several movies, including The Namesake, The Exonerated, and You're Nobody 'til Somebody Kills You, and the indies Undermind and On the Road With Judas. She has worked in television, on The Bronx is Burning, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Rescue Me, Guiding Light, One Life to Live, and Bored to Death, in which she appears topless in a scene with Ted Danson. She appears in CBS' pilot "Made in Jersey". Blank grew up in New Haven and Washington, D.C., and attended Macalester College and the University of Minnesota. In 2001, she married the actor and playwright Erik Jensen. Blank and Jensen co-wrote The Exonerated, a play based on interviews they conducted with more than 40 exonerated death row inmates. In spring 2002, they co-directed The Exonerated at The Actors' Gang Theater. That production was nominated for five Ovation Awards and three NAACP Awards, won the Ovation for Best World Premiere Play, and has toured universities nationally. 

New Haven, Connecticut