A 19-year-old former Mount Maunganui teen has been revealed as the mystery girl named Bree, known to millions of people on the internet as LonelyGirl15.
The San Francisco Chronicle has reported that former Mount Maunganui College student Jessica Rose has been posing as the 16-year-old home-schooled teenager posting "LonelyGirl15" online video diaries on sites such as YouTube and MySpace.
The New York Times also reported Bree had been identified as Rose, a New Zealander who is a graduate of the New York Film Academy. She has been making a serialised version of a project planned to become a movie: episodes suggested Bree was the home-schooled daughter of strictly religious parents who was sneaking away to send internet video blogs of her inner thoughts.
The Bay of Plenty Times contacted Jessica's mother, Coralie Rose, in Mount Maunganui this morning who said her daughter's US publicist had asked her not to talk to the media. The Bay Times then tried to contact the publicists but they were unavailable.
The San Francisco newspaper reported Jessica's internet video diaries had caused a cyber-stir not seen since cult movie The Blair Witch Project - and the mystery has fuelled the popularity of the short videos.
Jessica Rose was separately listed on the internet as having studied drama since starting at Mt Maunganui College in 2000, including a national youth drama course in screen acting in 2003. She moved to Auckland in 2004 to study acting at Studio 111 in Ponsonby.
LonelyGirl15 started posting her dorky adventures on June 16. Over the next three months 29 videos hit the internet with Bree giving hints about her life, saying she spent her youth in New Zealand, was treated for "lazy eye" and had an obsession with physicist Richard Feynman.
On YouTube 26,930 people are subscribed to the LonelyGirl15 "channel", meaning they regularly view videos posted there. More than 2.3 million people have viewed Bree's videos
Internet fans discovered the Lonelygirl15 name was trademarked recently by Californian attorney Kenneth Goodfried and that Bree's MySpace account was being controlled from a computer at Creative Artists Agency.
Many of the LonelyGirl15 videos were reportedly shot in the bedroom of Ramesh Flinders, a screenwriter and film-maker from California. The New York Times reported that on learning that Ms Rose was an actress whose interests were more in line with parties and posing, one fan wrote: "I'm heartbroken ... but a wonderful actress had me fooled into thinking she was a geek like me."
- NZPA, staff reporter
