After a breakout Hollywood debut in Charlie’s Angels, the actor-DJ’s rise was suddenly stalled by the pandemic, industry shutdowns, and a devastating car crash. Now, she is back on the rise – and totally unbothered by follower counts.
For a moment, Ella Balinska smiles at her phone in silence. It gives me a beat to take the actress in – unobscured, today, by makeup, professional lighting, or a camera lens. Remarkably, she remains everything you see on screen: composed, commanding. She flips the device around, so I’m face-to-face with her Instagram profile. Beneath her digital avatar reads: Felt cute, might delete later.
“I want my audiences to lose themselves in my projects and suspend their disbelief for as long as possible,” she says. “So like, do I just fucking get rid of social media?”
The 28-year-old is brandishing her bio in response to the rumoured mandate that directors must meet a studio’s ‘follower-count quota.’ We got here via a now-familiar story: Maya Hawke – bolstered by famous parents and a breakout role on a Netflix drama – was allegedly advised by a director not to delete her social media, since he’d be forced to cast influencers instead. But, many talent find the nuances of modern self-promotion difficult to master. A ‘Zillennial,’ Ella herself is caught in something of a social media no-man’s-land – too old for earnest “Renegade” choreo, too young for unashamed oversharing. For this reason, she has publicly adopted the “might delete” meme, which, at eight years old, predates this whole new Hollywood.
Maybe the reason the phrase feels so ingrained is because it arrived the year Ella did. In 2017, the London-born actress landed her first lead role in a TV series, before going on to helm Elizabeth Banks’ Charlie’s Angels reboot alongside Kristen Stewart and star in Sundance-premiering thriller, Run Sweetheart Run. It wasn’t so much the ingenue’s entrée as a full-scale launch.
But Newton did warn what goes up must come down, and for Ella, along with the entertainment industry at large, it was a crash landing. Just five months after Charlie’s Angels hit theaters, entertainment came to a standstill with the onset of the global pandemic. In 2020, whilst already in the grip of immense personal and professional uncertainty, Ella was involved in a severe crash on a Los Angeles freeway. After six months of recovery, she regained momentum as the lead of Netflix series, Resident Evil. Soon after, the SAG strikes brought everything to a halt once more.
“When I was a younger person, I had less experience. I had less – and we throw this word around rather callously – truly less trauma. At the end of the day, you can be an amazing performer, imagine, do all of the work and theory around [a role] and research, but sometimes just lived experience is just so powerful. Acting for me is a real, emotional conduit.”
The unexpected twists and turns of Ella’s recent years have shaped her into a performer defined by grit, honesty, and emotional depth. Throughout, she’s been intentional about pursuing roles that stretch her range, such as her latest project, The Occupant. The sci-fi thriller sees Ella as an engineering geologist, embarking on a high-stakes mission to fund experimental cancer treatment for her terminally ill sister. Ironically, the story is catalysed with a crash – though, this time, it’s a helicopter plummeting onto a mountain.
“Sincerely, I wanted to do it as much justice as I could because how shit would it be if I did this project and then looked back and went, ‘Oh, I could have done more, should have done more.’ This was truly a lay-it-all-on-the-line role for me. It felt like, if there was ever a time to go all in, it was this.”
A solo survival film, The Occupant demanded Ella carry the story (and sometimes, camera during three grueling months in the snowy wilds of Georgia. Between plunging into ice-cold lakes and relentless trudging through the mountains, she considers the shoot a lesson in resilience. One “funny” anecdote Ella can recall involves losing feeling in her legs after endlessly hiking up the mountain, only to be injected with a mystery substance by the Russian on-set medic. The numbness never wore off, but a thick brain fog set in just before shooting one of the film’s most pivotal scenes. It wasn’t until later Ella learned she’d been given a sedative.
“[I made a point] of saying to the crew, ‘Guys, this is hard work and this sucks. If you are struggling, please say, and we will accommodate that. We are in an extreme circumstance right now.’ I think that transparency neutralized the whole set. We’re all in the snow, cold. There was no, ‘Oh, but she is the actor.’”
On harder days, Ella returns to the advice given to her by comedian and writer, Trevor Noah: “energy is currency.” As an actor, she’s comforted by the knowledge that she has always poured 100 percent of her energy into roles that warranted the effort. Still, it’s frustrating that after all the cuts and bruises, the sub-zero shoots, and even sedatives, the filmmaking, and her performance itself, can go unrecognised.
“I’ll speak on it,” Ella says, plainly. “I worked my fucking ass off for [The Occupant], I really put myself through it, and I’d love to also be even just a small aspect, given my flowers…I’m not here saying I’m going to win an Oscar in three years, I would just love for my future in acting to be projects where people really sit down and go, That was really good. Because there have been times where one tiny continuity error or something happens, and for some reason completely discredits the entire project.”
It’s the curse of collaboration: as an actor, you’re just one small cog in a machine that’s entirely out of your control. Maybe the pursuit of real authorship drove Ella to pursue a self-reliant secondary career: DJing. This year, her alter ego Linska took center stage – performing at Coachella, holding down a Las Vegas residency, and touring across Europe.
“[Linska] really highlighted for me what does matter,” Ella says. “I’m always hoping to make people feel something – it doesn’t need to be big, it doesn’t need to be loud. Isn’t this so fun and silly? All we’re trying to do as creatives entertain you. We’re just trying to entertain.”
Curiously, Linska doesn’t bother with a pithy Instagram bio. Most of her photos show her in a black cap and oversized tee – a stark contrast to the red carpet polish of Ella Balinska’s main feed. If you were to ask Ella, she’d likely tell you she feels just as cute in both iterations. But even if Ella were to one day really crash out, and walk away from it all, you get the sense she’d still land firmly on her feet – just as composed, just as commanding.
“I had the launch,” she says, “and the launch was cool. I’m just enjoying the steps now. Let’s really start building this ladder.” Amen to that.
Words by Beatrice Hazlehurst
