Bio
Chanelle de Jager is a South African actress, casting director, entrepreneur, scriptwriter and director best known for her starring role as Des du Pont on the M-Net soap opera Egoli.
Chanelle was born in Witbank and attended Secunda Primary School and Menlopark High. From 1993-1994 she studied at Jo-Crystal Drama School under the tuition of Liezel Spies and in 1995 began to specialise in drama at Pro-Arté and was awarded national colours through ATKV.
Chanelle worked as a full-time actress for Franz Marx Films for the first six years of her career on Egoli. While she took a working holiday in the UK in 2004, she worked on short films and developed a strong interest in the process behind the camera. During this time she also filmed a cameo role on the British legal drama series Judge John Deed.
Then she returned to South Africa and studied Film and Television at the Motion Picture Academy. The subjects she took were Production, Editing, Writing and Directing.
In her second year she was offered a position as an assistant and video editor for a wildlife cinematographer and she gladly accepted. The position required that she had to relocate to Cape Town.
At the beginning of 2011 she joined an acting agency, Emma Ress Management, and since then she has been acting full time again in commercials, voice overs, film and theatre.
Films she has acted in include the M-Net short film Smoorverlief (2009), Jimmy in Pienk (2012), another short film - which she wrote - called Format (2013) and Faan se Trein (2014).
In theatre, she appeared in a production of Hansel and Gretel for the Canal Walk Festival of Fun in 2011 and in that same year had a starring role in the Neil LaBute play Fat Pig, directed by Tamryn Speirs, which ran at the On Broadway theatre, She reprised her role for a run of the show at the Old Mutual theatre the following year.
Chanelle also has extensive voice over and voice acting experience including a radio drama from Leon van Nierop in 2008. She has appeared in numerous commercials as well for clients including Bon Prix and Lidl (Germany), Go Compare (UK), Nivea (worldwide), the Swiss Lottery (Switzerland), Spur (South Africa) and EA Sports, which also aired worldwide.
She sings in alto/soprano, can dance in hip hop or belly dancing styles, does yoga and pottery and is also a catalogue model. She is fluent in Afrikaans and English.
Chanelle also works as casting director for KAYOS and runs her own children's entertainment company called Jolly Cherry Entertainment. She is a proud ambassador for an NPO via Formidable Women Campaign.