Jackie Kelly was born in the Chicago area, and she grew up in Sleepy Hollow, Illinois, about 45 miles west of Chicago. She began acting in live theater at the age of 12. She was cast in the lead role for her first short film, The Dress (2014) which played film festivals around the world. The Dress was an Official Selection of the 2015 Melbourne Queer Film Festival, the longest running queer film festival in Australia, one of the longest running queer film festivals in the world, and the largest queer film festival in the Southern Hemisphere.At the age of 21, she was cast to play the starring role in her first feature film, In Memory Of (2018). She was also a co-writer and one of the producers on this film.Jackie Kelly is a graduate of Webster University in St. Louis, where she earned a degree in screenwriting.