22/07/2026
Breaking News: Teen Actress Kaylee Hottled passes on age 18.
RIP to Godzilla vs. Kong’s Kaylee Hottle — today we mourn the passing of a young actress who died far too soon.
Kaylee Hottle died yesterday, July 21, 2026 from injuries sustained in a single-vehicle collision in Ijamsville, Maryland. She was 18.
Kaylee Hottle was a deaf American actress who starred in the 2021 film Godzilla vs. Kong and its 2024 sequel, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. For the latter, she was nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Performance by a Younger Actor.
Hottle was born in Atlanta, Georgia, to an all-deaf family, with her father's side having four generations of deaf relatives. She was fluent in American Sign Language (ASL).
She attended the Texas School for the Deaf in Austin, Texas, where she competed in track and field.
Hottle's career began with commercials as a child actor at the age of 9.
She was cast in the role of a deaf child in Godzilla vs. Kong, by recommendation of an assistant director from the earlier film Kong: Skull Island (2017) who had seen her in a Convo commercial.
“I had a connection with Convo [video relay service app for deaf and hard-of-hearing people]. They asked me to be in a commercial one day, and so I did that commercial,” she said. “And then the assistant director of [Kong: Skull Island] saw me and they thought I matched the character description of Jia.”
Godzilla vs. Kong was her feature-film debut, starring alongside actors Rebecca Hall and Alexander SkarsgĂĄrd, who learned ASL so they and Hottle could communicate off camera.
The film also starred Millie Bobby Brown, Brian Tyree Henry, Eiza González and Kyle Chandler, among others.
Hottle's character, Jia, is the only human who communicates with King Kong directly using sign language. She teaches the giant ape how to sign, forming a close bond with him throughout Godzilla vs. Kong and its sequel, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.
Outside of the MonsterVerse, Hottle appeared in an episode of the TV series Magnum P.I. in 2021 and she also appeared in
