Biography

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Since moving to Los Angeles, de Witt has expanded in multiple roles as a filmmaker. As an actor, she took the basic training she received as an undergrad at NYU and elevated her studies of acting, attending numerous classes and workshops, familiarizing herself with various approaches. She carried this training into film and theatre. 

She spent the first couple years in LA driving all over California and Nevada in a 1991 Ford Bronco to cut her teeth as an actor. She did many shorts, independents, shelved projects, student films, music videos, and theatre, including playing the Queen of Babylon in Amit Itelman's 'Bride of Blood,' which ran at the Skylight Theatre in Los Feliz. The Bronco made its own name as the vehicle Dave Grohl and Pat Smear drove around Hollywood for their David Bowie tribute video. 

After a few bohemian years deWitt decided to refine her other skills, and in 2017 she applied to the highly competitive New York University's Writer's Workshop in Paris. She was among the 5% of applicants accepted. She attended the low-residency MFA Creative Writing program from 2018-2020 and graduated with a 4.0 GPA.

Within weeks of graduating, she signed with a manager and was cast as the female lead in a movie to be directed by Academy Award® winning Polish director Zbigniew Rybcyński. 

Then the Covid-19 pandemic hit and it all went away. Undeterred, she began making independents, largely with Director of Photography Marcin Szocinski, one of her most frequent collaborators. They later founded production company Please Extinguish LLC and kicked off their partnership with a commissioned clip by Adidas Tokyo which ran online and at GR8 in Harajuku. 

With award-winning director Curtis Anthony Williams, they produced feature film Last Weekend (2023), which starred deWitt and Charlie Barnett of Russian Doll (2019) and The Acolyte: A Star Wars Story (2024). During this time, she was also cast as one of the principal players in Candy Land (2022) John Swab's lauded exploitation thriller about a group of truck stop sex workers known as lot lizards. The feature premiered as a headliner at Locarno 2022.

That same year she took some time off to become a mother, but during that time wrote three feature screenplays  and designed pitch decks. When she was finished breastfeeding, she was commissioned by Tokyo boutique GR8 to write, direct, and star in a short film, asking that it be about an American in Tokyo. The result was Karita, which premiered at Dances With Films at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, and had special screenings at HollyShorts and Japan House Los Angeles, a cultural hub of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This latter screening also featured another Japanese collaboration, the short Horse, which received semi-finalist laurels from Flickers's Rhode Island, screened as part of Portland IFF's online advertisement competition and won 'Best Dramatic Short' at Cult Movies International Film Festival in London. 

She's currently repped by Jennifer Garland of Circle Talent Agency and managed Walter Tabayoyong of Altamero Management in Los Angeles. deWitt recently wrapped another independent which is set for release in 2025, with three other project involvements on the horizon. 

Virginia lives in Los Angeles with her husband, artist and designer Cali deWitt. They have a young son, but have continued to travel extensively, getting their son both his Canadian and U.S. passports within months of him being born. With her husband's business Saint Mxxxxxx in Tokyo, they travel with particular frequency to Japan, which is what afforded Virginia her basic Japanese skills and foraying into working with Japanese filmmakers. She spends much of her time dedicated to fitness such as yoga, swimming, and weight training. 

Born in Louisiana as 'Virginia Rand Atkins,' de Witt spent most of her childhood in the D.C area. She attended the Washington International School Immersion Program for elementary school, and continues to speak excellent French. A precocious teenager, she asked to be sent to boarding school overseas and attended Bedales School in England for GCSEs and A-Levels (UK High School Equivalent.) She spent one year reading philosophy at the University of Bristol before transferring to New York University and spending the remainder of her undergraduate studies in Manhattan. The summer before she moved to New York, she interned on Capital Hill in Washington D.C. for U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH). She also held internships at Emmy® Award winning show The Colbert Report, and for media advance in Mayor Bill de Blasio's Office at New York City Hall.  In the United States she's spent extensive time in Louisiana, Washington D.C., Maryland, Wyoming, Rhode Island, and New York, and overseas she has spent stints in London and Paris. 

[Pictured with Mitsuhiro Kubo, CEO of GR8 Tokyo & Los Angeles]