Kaylee Hottle, the newborn actress best known for playing Jia in two of Legendary’s MonsterVerse films, has tragically lost her life at the tender age of 18. Hottle’s father, Joshua Hottle, confirmed that his daughter was killed in a car accident in Maryland on Tuesday morning. He said authorities initially informed him she had been involved in a sedate crash before later telling him that her heart had stopped while she was being taken to hospital.
Joshua also shared the news in an emotional social-media livestream delivered in American Sign Language, explaining that he was traveling from Texas to Maryland following his daughter’s death. Kaylee was born into a multigenerational deaf family, and was fluent in ASL. She began appearing in commercials as a child, but her huge break came in 2021’s Godzilla vs. Kong, in which she played Jia, a newborn girl living on Skull Island under the care of Dr. Ilene Andrews, played by Rebecca Hall.
Collider Exclusive · Sci-Fi Personality Quiz Which Sci-Fi Hero Are You Most Like? Paul Atreides · Captain Kirk · Princess Leia · Ellen Ripley · Max Rockatansky
Five iconic heroes. Five completely different ways of facing an impossible universe. One of them shares your instincts, your values, and your particular way of refusing to back down. Eight questions will tell you which one.
🏜️Paul Atreides
🖖Capt. Kirk
✊Princess Leia
🔦Ellen Ripley
🔥Max Rockatansky
01
How do you lead when the stakes couldn’t be higher? The way you lead under pressure is the most sincere thing about you.
02
What is your greatest strength in a crisis? The quality that keeps you alive when everything else fails.
03
What is the thing you’d sacrifice everything else for? Your deepest motivation is your truest compass.
04
How do you relate to the people around you? Who you are to others under pressure is who you really are.
05
You’re facing a threat that no one else believes is real. What do you do? How you respond when you’re the only one who sees it defines everything.
06
What has your heroism cost you personally? Every hero pays. The question is what — and whether they’d pay it again.
07
How do you feel about the rules of the world you’re in? Every hero has a relationship with the system. What’s yours?
08
When everything is on the line, what keeps you going? The answer is the most sincere thing about you.
Your Hero Has Been Identified Your Sci-Fi Hero Is…
Your answers point to the iconic sci-fi hero who shares your instincts, your values, and your particular way of facing the impossible.
Arrakis · Dune
Paul Atreides
You carry a weight most people would crumble under — the knowledge of what you’re capable of, and the burden of what you might have to become.
You see further ahead than others and you plan accordingly, even when the vision frightens you.
You are driven by loyalty to your people and a sense of destiny you didn’t ask for but can’t escape.
Paul Atreides is not simply a hero — he is someone who understands the cost of power and chooses to bear it anyway.
That gravity, that willingness to carry what others won’t, is exactly you.
USS Enterprise · Star Trek
Captain Kirk
You lead with instinct, warmth, and an absolute refusal to accept a no-win scenario — because you’ve always believed there’s a third option nobody else has thought of yet.
You take the mission seriously without ever taking yourself too seriously.
Your crew would follow you anywhere, not because you demand it, but because you’ve earned it.
Kirk’s genius isn’t tactical — it’s human. He reads people, bends rules with purpose, and wills outcomes into existence through sheer conviction.
That combination of warmth, audacity, and relentless optimism is unmistakably yours.
The Rebellion · Star Wars
Princess Leia
You are the kind of person who holds the line when everyone else is losing faith — not because you’re fearless, but because giving up simply isn’t something you’re capable of.
You lead through conviction. Your voice carries because your belief is unshakeable.
You gave up everything ordinary the moment you chose the cause, and you’ve never looked back.
Leia is not a supporting character in her own story — she is the moral centre of the entire rebellion.
That same fierce, principled, unbreakable core is what defines you.
The Nostromo · Alien
Ellen Ripley
You are not reckless, not grandiose, and not particularly interested in being anyone’s hero — you just refuse to stop when it matters.
You see threats clearly, you document the truth even when no one listens, and when the time comes you handle it yourself.
Ripley’s heroism is earned, not performed. She doesn’t have a speech — she has a flamethrower and a plan.
You share her composure under the worst possible pressure, and her refusal to pretend the monster isn’t there.
When it counts, you don’t flinch. That’s everything.
The Wasteland · Mad Max
Max Rockatansky
You have been through fire that would break most people — and what came out the other side is something the world underestimates at its peril.
You don’t ask for aid, don’t need validation, and don’t wait for anyone to tell you the rules no longer apply.
Your loyalty, when it finally arrives, is absolute — but it’s earned in silence and tested in action, not in words.
Max is not a nihilist. He is someone who lost everything and found, against his will, that he still has something worth protecting.
That bruised, stubborn, ultimately human core is exactly yours.
Who Did Kaylee Hottle Play in the Godzilla Movies?
In the movie, Jia and Kong formed an emotional bond and eventually began communicating through sign language, which was one of the coolest and most moving elements to a huge and brash story. She would later go on to reprise the role of Jia in 2024’s Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, once again appearing alongside Hall, Alexander Skarsgård, and her gigantic bestie. Hall and Skarsgård both learned ASL in order to communicate with Hottle, who was nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Performance by a Younger Actor at the 52nd Saturn Awards in 2025.
She also appeared in an episode of the Magnum P.I. reboot as Joon, but it was her work in the MonsterVerse that made her a prominent newborn representative for deaf performers in major studio filmmaking, with Hottle speaking about the importance of bringing real sign-language representation to the screen. Hottle was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and later attended the Texas School for the Deaf in Austin.
Our thoughts are with Kaylee Hottle’s loved ones at this extraordinarily arduous time.
Release Date
March 29, 2024
Runtime
115 Minutes
Writers
Terry Rossio, Adam Wingard, Simon Barrett, Jeremy Slater
