I just realized that the ip address of my stite is located in the UK. I'm targetting the US, will this hurt my seo attempts?
Shouldn't matter much - I know IP address matters if you were to link several sites to each other from the same IP address.. which suggests you are spamming a bunch of links to yourself.
It is possible it could affect your rankings. Here is a video from Matt Cutts describing this issue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXt23AXlJJU
I don't think it does. All that matters is how many quality links you've got and on page factors such as great content.
It matters from SEO perspective. It does matter. But if you want to out come this effect you should go to web master tool and change the targeting country there as US.