Ellen Feiss

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Ellen Feiss (born circa 1987) became an Internet phenomenon after her 2002 Errol Morris-directed television commercial for Apple Computer's Switch campaign grew into a cult hit.^[1] In the commercial, the then-14-year-old^[2] American high school student complained that her father's Windows PC had broken. The incident she describes in the commercial is presumably an operating system crash which prevented the keyboard buffer from being read, causing it to fill up. The BIOS on personal computers will often cause the motherboard's speaker to beep with every keystroke when the keyboard buffer is full.

Fueling the popularity of the advertisement was the speculation that Feiss was under the influence of illicit drugs during the filming of the commercial, due to her slurred speech and disoriented eyes.^[3] Feiss denied these claims in an interview with the Brown Daily Herald and noted that she was only taking Benadryl, an allergy medication with sedative properties. She ascribed the "drugged" behavior to a combination of the effect of the Benadryl, together with exhaustion (she said that her ad was filmed at ten o'clock in the evening).^[4] She also explained how she had come to appear in the commercial:

“

I'm friends with the son of the director, Errol Morris. I'm friends with his son Hamilton. I went with him after school, him and two of my friends. We didn't think we were going to make ads; we were just going to get the free set food. So we go there, and they're like, "We need a couple more people, so I guess the three of you can make ads." So we all made ads, and me and Hamilton's got picked. I had no idea I was going to do it until I got there.^[4]

”

A second ad, in which Feiss talks about the virtues of her PowerBook G4, was circulated extensively on the Internet.^[5]

Feiss's popularity grew to the point where she was offered appearances on both David Letterman's and Jay Leno's late night shows, both of which she turned down.^[4]

In September 2005, Feiss made her movie acting debut in the French short film Bed and Breakfast. She plays the role of an American visiting France with her boyfriend who is drawn into a dangerous fantasy world when they visit an old friend at his castle. The directors, Martin Beilby and Loïc Moreau, had seen Feiss's Apple commercial and wanted someone with her special qualities for the part, so they decided to approach Feiss herself. She accepted the offer, despite having no formal acting experience.^[2]^[6]

Feiss graduated from The Cambridge School of Weston in 2005. She is currently in college, and plans to major in either photography and video or women's studies.^[7]