Erin Kellyman Is Finding Herself—On the Big Screen, as an Actress, and in Every Genre
Don’t get Erin Kellyman wrong; she’s thrilled to be here. It’s just that the 26-year-old actress doesn’t exactly love being the center of attention, and she’s suddenly found herself squinting into the blinding beam of a massive spotlight. “This industry is, I feel, very contradictory to the person I am,” the softspoken actress tells me over a video call. Kellyman, a freckle-splashed breath of fresh air with gloriously fiery curls, is in a palpable growth period as a person and performer—but beneath the glamour, she’s a family girl who loves her dog, writing scripts, and watching crime shows with her castmates. (More on that later.)
It’s 2 p.m. in her time zone and 9 a.m. in mine. She’s swapped her recent Loewe ensembles (she stars in the brand’s latest campaign) for a casual tee; the Birmingham, England-born starlet’s freckles dazzling the same way they did onscreen during an early viewing of Eleanor the Great—Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut and Kellyman’s most focal role to date.
Earlier this spring, Kellyman told The Upcoming that she was “honestly horrified” of the then-impending release of Eleanor. “The idea of there being so much footage of me in the world. … It’s not happened yet,” she explains to me. “I feel like this is like the first time where there's a bit to look at.” You see, Kellyman’s experience in the film industry has largely been comprised of smaller roles in star-studded projects—the BBC’s Les Misérables and Marvel’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, to name a few. However, this Johansson-led film marks many firsts for Kellyman, including working opposite leading lady June Squibb as well as with the first-time director.
Though Eleanor received a several-minute-long standing ovation at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, it’s taken some mental preparation for Kellyman to stomach the screen time. “I feel very, very blessed every day to be doing this career because this has been a dream since I was, like, 13,” the burgeoning actress quips. “But I think younger me definitely creeps out sometimes where I'm just a bit like, ‘Oh gosh, what have I done?’”
It’s younger Erin’s smile I can see shining in Kellyman’s eyes as I tell her I, first, would have never guessed her British nationality based on her flawless American accent (she credits a childhood spent parroting Disney Channel shows like Hannah Montana and That’s So Raven), and second, that I commuted to the office sporting black teartracks after witnessing her heartbreaking performance as Nina—a college sophomore vying for a morsel of recognition from her famous father (that she exists, that her mother once did, that she would amount to something). “Oh my god, I’m so sorry!” she gleefully apologizes.
While her character’s storyline differs widely from her own, Kellyman found emotional synergy with Nina’s arc in this half-comedy, half-tear-jerker. “You meet her and she's so insecure. Like, she can barely string a sentence together,” she explains. “It feels like she's always stuttering and doubting herself, and by the end of the film, she really comes into her own and finds her voice.”
As a self-described “extremely introverted, anxious child,” navigating this mysterious and glamour-cloaked industry has been somewhat of a challenge for the actress, who had to come into her own on her own in front of cameras. (“None of my family are in this industry, nobody knows how it works,” she explains.) But while her character’s on-screen family is tattered and torn, she credits her own (plus her “family unit” of a cast) as the ultimate source of support during this exhilarating process. “First of all, my mum raised me right, so I already had a solid work ethic,” she laughs. “And then obviously, June and Scarlet were attached, so it felt like a dream even being able to audition for it.”
