The Kathy Lee Parker Show with Kathy Lee Parker

Guest, Jon Marie Mack, actress

Jon Marie Mack was born in Rochester, Michigan. She grew up on a 180 acre farm owned by her grandparents. The only child of a drama teacher and theater director, she began acting on stage at the age of 5. She is of Polish and Eastern European descent. Upon graduating high school, Mack attended the prestigious NYU Tisch School of Arts and studied theater under both Lee Strasberg Institute and Experimental Theater programs. After college, Jon relocated to Los Angeles to continue post graduate studies in graphic design at UCLA. At this time, she began working in feature films. 

She first came to national attention with her performance as Ava Gardner in the Emmy Award winning biopic Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999) starring Halle Berry. From there she went on to appear in several feature films as well as television. She played a junkie named Jane in Saw VI (2009), the 6th installment of the franchise. In 2012, Mack played a soccer mom hoping to score with Gerard Butler in Playing for Keeps (2012), also starring Jessica Biel, Uma Thurman and Catherine Zeta Jones. She also appeared in Straight A's (2013) with Anna Paquin, Ryan Phillippe and Luke Wilson as well as Millenium Entertainment's Spiders 3D (2013) In 2015, Mack played a gun slinger named Reggie in Blunt Force Trauma (2015) alongside Mickey Rourke, Ryan Kwanten and Freida Pinto. She played an entertainment reporter in SyFy's creature comedy Lavalantula (2015) and sequel 2 Lava 2 Lantula! (2016). In 2017, she played a telepathic government test subject in Mind Blown (2016) and ancient time traveling sorceress in Pandora's Box (2017). Her other recent projects include Lifetime TV Original Saving My Baby (2018) and horror indie The Amityville Murders (2018). In Kill Chain (2019) due out in 2019, she plays the streetwise Simone alongside Nicolas Cage. She will also appear in the upcoming action drama Acceleration Acceleration (2019) along with Dolph Lundgren, Danny Trejo and Sean Patrick Flanery. Mack is also an accomplished musician, singer, songwriter and producer. Her brainchild Auradrone has released 3 albums independently with a soon to be released ep of new material coming soon. Auradrone has also performed in festivals around the world including Serbia's Exitfest. 

Animal welfare and preserving endangered wildlife are huge passions for Mack who created her foundation Defending the Endangered in 2015 to raise awareness and aid against poaching and trophy hunting. In 2016, she co-directed, starred in and produced her music video Auradrone: Weapon of Choice (2016) which illustrates the devastation these practices are causing the wildlife and planet. Defending the Endangered held it's first celebrity charity event in 2017 which raised funds to support the Rhino Rescue Project and Black Mambas APU in South Africa. DTE is planning it's next charity gala for 2020.