"[5] The family moved to Cape Town, South Africa, and later to Tumbler Ridge, a small coal-mining town in northern British Columbia when Lou was still a child, later relocating to the Lower Mainland, on the coast, where the young Jurgens discovered acting in high school, performing in musicals.
At age 18, Jurgens moved to Toronto to study at the Acting Conservatory at York University,[2] graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Honours.
[8] In their graduation year (2009), Jurgens co-founded The Blood Projects theatrical production company with their friend and fellow alumna Sasha Singer-Wilson after the unions affiliated with the university went on strike, which led to the cancelling of many classes and shows: "It completely altered our final year ... We really felt the loss of that creative time, so we decided we were going to create our own work.
"[9] After graduating, Jurgens spent time in London, England, doing theatre workshops[3] before returning to Toronto,[2] where they continued to study with David Rotenberg at the Professional Actors Lab and Michèle Lonsdale Smith.
[6] Director Jonathan Bensimon has called them "a gifted, versatile, and bold actress" and described their performances as "raw, honest and fearless".
"[4] Michael DeCarlo's Two Hands to Mouth (2012) is a dark, comedic, politically-driven feature film where eight blindfolded guests assemble at a secret pop-up restaurant.
[5] Swearnet: The Movie (2014) is a comedy made by the team behind Trailer Park Boys, plus Tom Green, Carrot Top, and Lou Jurgens,[10] who plays Julie, the girlfriend of Rob Wells, "driven mad by jealousy with an obsession over an ex-punk rock star".
"[3] Filming Swearnet was the most fun they had ever had on a set: Wells, Mike Smith, John Paul Tremblay and Tom Green were constantly improvising.
"[5][10] In The Man in the Shadows (2015), Jurgens played Rachel, a photographer addicted to prescription drugs who starts to lose her sense of reality as she grapples with her broken marriage and her nightmares, which turn out to be real.
Jurgens said it gave them "permission" to explore the experience of being haunted, hunted and stalked", an "opportunity to live in a state of mental unraveling": "I enjoyed the challenge of playing a character who was wrestling with truth and illusion, experiencing the slippage of her own sanity.
[7] In December 2015, Jurgens finished filming their scenes as the star of County Time, a short film directed by Jonathan Bensimon (who directed them in Let Go of the Future)[4] and written by Josh Peace based on his experiences living in Huron County, Ontario, a small farming community filled with "larger than life characters" and tall tales.
In 2015, Jurgens had the starring role of Lucy Huff in the pilot for director Matthew Kowalchuk's comedy miniseries Green-ish, in which their character, a recent divorcee, forms an environmental activist group in an attempt to win the local mayoral race and remove their conservative ex-husband, the current mayor, from office.
[14] In 2013, Jurgens starred in the Dove and Gun music video Let Go of the Future,[9] which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.
[20] The company produced Singer-Wilson's first full-length play, Little Tongues, in a 35-seat downtown Toronto loft:[21] "When scenes happened in the kitchen ... the actors were really preparing food and the audience could smell the dinner being made.
[9] Jurgens has starred in an impressive list of high-profile theatrical productions including The Bewitched, The Clown Show, The Penelopiad and Reasons to Be Pretty.
[6] Nigel Shawn Williams's production of Peter Barnes' The Bewitched, one of her favourites, is set in 17th century Spain before the War of Spanish Succession, a story of the last of the Habsburg dynasty, "a family of rulers so inbred that their diseases prevent them from producing an heir to the throne",[5] in which she played Queen Anna: "It was an incredible experience playing a historical figure.
On 8 December 2015, Jurgens launched This Body Project,[4] a multimedia art event which took place at Artscape Youngplace described as seven years in the making.