The ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ actress died at 18 on July 21
A cause of death for Kaylee Hottle has been confirmed.
The Godzilla vs. Kong actress’ father Joshua Hottle shared with TMZ that the young Deaf actress, best known for playing Jia in the Godzilla x Kong franchise, was involved in a car accident on July 21 and died while being transported to a hospital. She was 18.
A day later, PEOPLE confirmed her cause of death to be multiple blunt force injuries, ruling her manner of death an accident, per the Maryland Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
Joshua shared a video on Facebook on the morning of July 21 announcing the heartbreaking news of her death in American Sign Language.
“I am taking a flight that I never would like to take,” he wrote in the caption. In the video, Joshua explained that he was traveling from Texas to Maryland to claim his daughter’s body.
An investigation by the Frederick County Sheriff’s Office revealed new details about the fatal car crash, including that the single-vehicle collision of a 1995 Honda Accord took place in the 11400 block of Windsor Road in the town of Ijamsville, Maryland.
The preliminary investigation determined that a 19-year-old man from Frederick was driving the vehicle with two other passengers in the early hours of July 21. The car was traveling down a two-lane road when it drifted off the right side and struck a culvert.
“Excessive speed is believed to be a contributing factor in the collision,” a release from the sheriff’s office read.
Both the Frederick County Sheriff’s Office and the Division of Fire and Rescue Services responded to a report of the crash at 2:52 a.m.
Born into a Deaf family, Kaylee was part of a multigenerational Deaf community. According to The Houston Chronicle, both of her parents are Deaf, and four generations of her father’s family are members of the Deaf community.
Kaylee’s path to Hollywood began unexpectedly. In a 2024 interview with The Houston Chronicle, she recalled that her acting career started after appearing in a 2017 advertisement for the American Sign Language translation app Convo.
Kaylee then made her feature film debut in 2021’s Godzilla vs. Kong, starring alongside Alexander Skarsgård, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry and Eiza González. Her character, Jia, quickly became a fan favorite as the emotional bridge between Kong and humanity.
She later reprised the role in 2024’s Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, reuniting with Hall and Henry as Jia continued her journey as the adoptive daughter of Hall’s Dr. Ilene Andrews.
Outside of the MonsterVerse films, Kaylee appeared in a 2021 episode of Magnum P.I. and continued building momentum as a young performer. In 2024, she received a Saturn Award nomination for Best Younger Performer in a Film for her work in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.