Jessica Biel on stunt driving, growing up on set and taking control behind the camera

Inside the “Jessica Biel” episode

In this episode of SmartLess, Jessica Biel joins the hosts for a wide-ranging conversation about learning performance driving for Matchbox, beginning her career as a teenager and expanding into producing. Biel also discusses the practical strain of combining international shoots with family life and explains how she tries to decompress outdoors.

From defensive driver to precision manoeuvres

Biel describes herself as a cautious driver in everyday life, particularly with children in the car, but says Matchbox gave her the chance to train in high-performance driving. During preparation in Budapest, she learned to slide a car, execute turns and stop with a wheel precisely on a mark. She also completed laps on a track for her role, whose character races cars on the side.

The controlled environment changed her relationship with speed, Biel says. Driving herself felt exhilarating because the production had established safety measures and cleared her path. By contrast, scenes in which another person controlled the moving vehicle made her feel sick and less secure because she could not anticipate turns or other movements.

A childhood career became an on-set education

Looking back, Biel says performing seemed instinctive: as a child, she continually asked her mother to watch and record her routines. She pursued gymnastics, soccer and acting classes before spending three consecutive pilot seasons in Los Angeles at ages 11, 12 and 13. At 14, she booked Seventh Heaven alongside the independent film Ulee’s Gold.

Biel characterises her four full seasons on Seventh Heaven as an intensive film-and-television education. Crew members taught her practical screen skills such as finding her light, moving smoothly within the frame and becoming comfortable performing emotional material around strangers. The trade-off, she recalls, was an unconventional adolescence with limited time in ordinary school and frequent absences from soccer practice.

Escaping typecasting without escaping uncertainty

After playing a well-behaved teenager on television, Biel says she became more deliberate about choosing sharply different projects. She identifies The Rules of Attraction and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as important steps in showing that her television role was only one character, not the limit of what she could play. Even after decades of work, however, she tells the hosts that professional security remains elusive and that she still feels she is fighting her way back into film.

Building Iron Ocean—and balancing work with family

Biel says she formed Iron Ocean with producer and longtime friend Michelle Purple because she wanted more control over her career instead of waiting for auditions. Their aim was to develop smaller projects centred on women and female stories. According to Biel, industry representatives initially discouraged the venture, and the company accomplished little during its first decade before producing projects including The Sinner, Cruel Summer, Candy and The Better Sister.

That greater creative control has not removed logistical pressures. Biel says filming Matchbox across Budapest, Morocco and Slovakia overlapped with Justin Timberlake’s tour, leaving the family separated for stretches and moving between countries. She credits nannies, assistants, colleagues and other support staff with making the arrangement possible. When time permits, she says exercise, hiking, walking the dogs, reading and quietly listening to the forest help her reset.