Nicca Ray was raised in Los Angeles, not far from the ­Griffith Park Planetarium where scenes from her father, Nicholas Ray’s, most famous film, Rebel Without a Cause, were shot. First inspired by the New York Dolls performing on the Real Don Steele Show, she started going to clubs on the Sunset Strip when she was fifteen, and became heavily involved in the L.A. punk scene when she was seventeen. At age twenty, she began work on getting sober, and shortly after, moved to New York, where, in her early thirties, was accepted into the New School University. While a student she published short stories in various journals, made two short films—including one that screened at the New York Underground Film Festival—and starred in Cutting Moments, the first film in the underground gore classic series, Family Portraits: A Trilogy of America, directed by Douglas Buck. After graduating in 1999, at thirty-eight years old, she devoted her life to researching and interviewing people about her father’s life, for which Ray by Ray is a culmination. She currently lives in New York City.