This is a woman who got into USC film school on an academic scholarship, worked as a screenwriter for legendary martial arts actor Sho Kosugi, and was the first woman to study muay Thai kickboxing in Thailand. And now she recently finished producing and starring in her first feature-length film, The Third Society, a 35mm action film that she paid for 85% of with her own very hard earned money. She doesn't just keep her eye on her goal, she runs it to the ground and eats it alive.

"This is the first time a woman has done all the jobs on an action movie," says Ruffner of her upcoming film. "The Third Society is about a female cop whose sister gets kidnapped by the Asian mafia and she has 24 hours to save her. I play the female character of 'Jones', [alongside] Sonja Eddy, Russell Van Brown and Shannon Clay. We shot in Los Angeles, Ventura and Australia. It was one wild ride, we had eight days of principal photography and one day of pick-ups."

Nine days. To shoot a feature film. Either Ruffner has a super-human adrenal gland or she somehow learned how to bend time and space. Talking to her, one of the above answers is as likely as the other.

Though Ruffner stars in the film, she does so without screen credit. And though she also produced and directed The Third Society, the name under the titles is "J.A. Steel". Her way, she explains, of separating herself from the stress that director/producers are put through on a day-to-day basis. "J.A Steel is the pseudonym. In typical Hollywood fashion, I have to distance myself, because I'd wake up in the morning [after a long shoot] and look in the mirror, I would see Jones. I wouldn't see myself. And while Jones and I are very similar, Jones is much angrier at the world. But you have to have the separation, and J.A. Steel is, to me, the superhuman person who can do all this stuff that needs to be done, but at the end of the day, there's me, Jacque."

Oddly enough, J.A. Steel was never meant to be born, as Ruffner had never intended to either direct or star in The Third Society. But circumstances changed when she took a crew out to shoot a trailer for the film, in order to drum up interest and investments for the feature. "I actually had a director for the trailer and we had a second unit, two cameras. So I spent probably about $42,000 on the trailer [though] we tell everybody it was $60. We had lear jets, I rented the Van Nuys airport - you name it, I had the gingerbread. I had camera bikes, I had more footage than you could shake a stick at. My original director and I had words and we ended up splitting up the camera crews. So we had two completely different crews shooting in different parts of the airport. I worked with my second unit D.P. - whose name, coincidentally, is Tony Jones. We shot very well together and I actually liked the footage that he and I shot than the footage that my director and original D.P. shot. The D.P. with the other director completely blew everything out, it was completely over-exposed. It was just a really bad situation, because I paid an enormous amount of money for Lear Jets and a Mercedes and the motorcycle. So I was, needless to say, furious. He and I kept arguing about shots, I was trying to tell him what shots he needs to be getting and he's like "no, no, no I got it." During the trailer all you see is my back, because he never had me turn around."

Early into pre-production, Ruffner reluctantly stepped into the leading role, realizing that she was the only one who could play Jones for the amount of money she had to spend. "I never wanted to be an actress. To this day I do not want to be an actress. But it was cheaper than trying to find someone to play Jones. We figured that it would take seven or eight stunt people to do what I do. And then all those salaries - why pay someone else to do it?"

Worse than creative differences, on the first day of shooting, she found herself faced with insult. "There was the typical 'we don't want you doing this because you might get hurt' sentiment [from the director and stunt co-ordinator]. 'Well you're a girl, girls don't do these things'. I was furious because he wouldn't let me do my own stunts. It was a very simple fight scene. Where I'm like, 'Buddy, I do this as a hobby. This is nothing.' He wasn't asking me to do something that I wouldn't do normally. Especially a fight scene or something like that, [where] punches are pulled, you're barely hitting the guy -- and I've been in kickboxing rings with black eyes, split lips, and you're worried about controlled stunt action? It's the whole Hollywood mentality towards women. I don't think the Hollywood guys want to see women in these roles."

It is this type of attitude that Ruffner feels is all too prevalent in the male-dominated film industry, and the primary reason for her creation of The Third Society.

"I grew up loving The Terminator and Sigourney Weaver in Alien. And to me those are the female action heroes. In Terminator 2 they took Linda Hamilton's character to the next logical level. In the first one she was this meek, demure waitress, and then she becomes a woman who can really kick ass. I love that because I believe that if you want to be a woman in an action film, you're going to have that moment of hesitation because you're a mother and you have a small child and yet you're about to take a life. That's the situation. [These days] you have the female action star like Cynthia Rothrock [in lower-budgeted movies], but she's always paired with a male co-star who's is more the main focus of the story.

"I had one exec say to me 'Women don't go to see action films'. My response 'no women don't go to see action films like Barbed Wire. Because they're insulting. Put a woman in an action role like Sigourney Weaver [had] in Aliens or Linda Hamilton in The Terminator, and you'll have a smash. But most of the time, they don't do that. I think that Hollywood is still run by men and that they are afraid of strong women. There are a lot of strong women out there, but they're still dominated. Look at Carrie Ann Moss in The Matrix. I loved her in that! But the men still had the Keanu Reeves character to dominate the Carrie Ann Moss character. She wasn't the one who was out to save the world, it was him. The problem [most executives had with] The Third Society is, 'you have this male character who is dominated by Jones. Why is that?' My response was usually 'Why are you asking me that question? You never ask a man why he has a women in his movie laying naked on a bed with her legs spread open waiting for a man to rescue her!' Why can't women have a female action hero who has the obligatory male standing around looking cute? Why can't the man be rescued? And that's what we played with in The Third Society."

Obviously, The Third Society is a personal film for Ruffner, as much a crusade as it is a passion. But there was one other driving influence behind her determination, something she feels has haunted her for over a decade. "I failed USC film school. I failed directing. I failed editing. I failed all the things that I did on this feature. I think professors were threatened by me. I don't truly believe that I failed. In school all I ever wanted to do was write screenplays, and the scripts I'd written all had car crashes and things blowing up. I was told even by my writing instructors "You have to reach deep inside yourself and find that Academy Award winning script, that drama, capture the essance of that emotion." But to me, the emotion is screaming down the highway at two o'clock in the morning, running from the cops, doing 250mph on my motorcycle - so just leave me alone, okay?

"I once asked [one of my professors] at USC, 'Why are you failing me?' he said 'Because you remind me of my ex-wife.' And I said, 'what does that have to do with anything? I turned in the assignments on time, I did the work'. And he said 'I just think you would benefit from taking the class over.' And it's the sense of domination and control. If you put a woman in the role of the action hero, you are confronting the male establishment. When guys go to see Stallone, or Schwartzenegger, they envision themselves as being that action hero. I think the fear is, because men control Hollywood, when men see a female action hero, they're seeing a woman who can kick their ass. When they go home, their girlfriend or whatever who might be taking karate might be able to kick their ass when they get there. I felt very fortunate because the guys on my crew were very secure and there were no worries. Everyone was 'hey, we're out to make a good film'. But mainstream Hollywood still sees it as "this is a woman's movie" or it's not an action film, or it's this and not that."

It was this type of sexism and domination that forced Ruffner to make certain decisions and take control of her dream project. "Everything was so much easier [after I dumped the director] except that I was terrified," she says. "For eleven years all anyone could do was remind me that I failed. There aren't too many people who got into USC film school, and there are even fewer that failed. The worst thing is that I stayed at USC and got my degree in Social Science and Communications. My last year at school I majored in Anthropology. So for eleven years I had to live with 'Okay, you failed directing at the most prestigious film school in the world.' That kind of weighs heavily on you mind. I tried to find a female director. Couldn't. I took on so much responsibility for budget reasons, as well as for the fact that I couldn't find anyone else."

Even now, a year after wrapping principal photography, Ruffner continues to work to finish The Third Society, which is currently in the state of post-sound. "I made so many sacrifices for the film that, if I can spend 90 cents each way to get to work, instead of paying money out for a used car, that's what I'm going to do. A lot of people aren't willing to do that in this day and age. A lot of people that I studied with [have been] handed ten million dollar budgets to make "independent films". I don't consider that an independent film budget. An independent film is when you have nothing and you make something out of that nothing. I had people who worked on the trailer but didn't work on the main unit. Filming in Ventura, people kept asking 'How are you going to make a film with no money?' And there's always a way, you just have to figure it out, and you have to figure out how much you want to sacrifice in the meantime. At the end of the day, I've made a full-length feature film, and I have something to show for my hard work and effort. It's a creative pursuit. I made the film for me. I can say I've done something that no other woman in Hollywood has done. There are millions of people out there with scripts that have been bought by studios that will never be made into films. Hopefully with The Third Society, women will see that we can be action heroes too. And maybe in five years someone will say, hey "I can be the next Jones". Or a woman will say, 'I have a script, maybe I can direct this'.

Plans, always plans. Ruffner is concentrating on finishing The Third Society, but she's trying to think two steps ahead. "We'll probably end up distributing the film ourselves," she says. "I've had offers for money to finish the film, but I had to turn them down, because basically, in return, they wanted all the rights to the film. So for the money they were offering me, I couldn't give up the rights. I fought too hard. So I had to wait another year, to save up money for a Dolby Digital license and a really cool stereo mix. We [do] have offers from some of the cable networks and some companies overseas once we finish it. I will get my money back once we're done."

Not that The Third Society will be her last production. Far from it. Ruffner has already entered pre-production on her next feature, The Vertex, which she describes as "a female version of a cross between Highlander and Bloodsport. It's the story of two sisters once again, only this time it's a battle for control over this Amazon nation. Modern day Amazons living out among the general population. We're going to shoot it all non-union and most likely shoot in Australia," she explains. "After The Third Society, I haven't been too happy with the Hollywood system. I'm tired of telling people "Yes, you can do this". It is possible to shoot an action film in nine days. It is possible to shoot a 35mm feature under $500,000, and it is possible to have all these things but you have to be well-prepared and you have to make sacrifices."

For more information on The Third Society see http://www.warriorentertainment.com/