Ella Balinska: “I had to be comfortable with feeling really uncomfortable”

Ella Balinska takes my call from Ibiza. She’s enjoying some time out with her dad after years of gruelling action films. Yes, there will be clubbing.

Balinska broke out with the 2019 remake of Charlie’s Angels alongside Kristen Stewart and Naomi Scott. Three months after its release, the world went into lockdown. Between filming projects, she was in a serious car crash that left her with nerve damage down the right side of her body. She couldn’t hold a cup. After a few months of rehab, she travelled to South Africa to film Netflix’s Resident Evil.

By the time she rolled up to the set of her latest release, The Occupant, she was exhausted: emotionally, physically, and mentally. Luckily, she was in good hands with writer and director Hugo Keijzer. The film centres on Abbey, a grieving geologist who retreats to a remote scientific outpost to care for her terminally ill sister. It quickly spirals into something far more surreal. Filming took place in the Caucasus Mountains – Balinska, Mother Nature, and a film crew fighting it out.

Speaking of mothers, Balinska’s is Lorraine Pascale, a British chef who has sold approximately one million books in the UK alone. Her dad is Polish aristocrat Count Kaz Balinski-Jundzill. You suspect her life was never going to be ordinary. But don’t mistake Balinska for a soft touch.

“Suffer!” Leonardo DiCaprio once advised her when Balinska asked his advice for artistic success. Mission accomplished – her performance is brilliant and hard-won.

Square mile: If I ask you to close your eyes and go to a place where you are entirely at peace, where would you go?

Ella Balinska: I play netball. There’s this moment right before the whistle blows, right before everyone goes, where we just stand in our positions in silence. For some reason that moment is a very peaceful place for me.

SM: The tension before action.

EB: Yes. I recently jumped out of a plane. Well, not recently, but in the grand scheme of jumping out of a plane, it was recent. There was that moment where I’m on this guy’s lap, buckled in, at the side of the plane, about to jump, and I was like, ‘There is nothing I can do to stop this right now.’ The total lack of control was so freeing.

As people, we are so focused on controlling everything around us. I am, anyway. Don’t get me wrong, it was chaos before. But the second I was laid up there on the edge, free.

SM: Did you feel anxious, or were you calm as you jumped?

EB: I wasn’t the first person off the plane. I watched someone else get ripped out of the aircraft, which is quite a jarring visual. I was honestly totally relaxed. And then the guy yelled, ‘Wrap your legs under the plane!’ and then the anxiety hit. My mate had already opened his parachute, and I knew I was good.

SM: What were some of your earliest memories of being in your body as a child?

EB: I was a very physical kid. Moving my body in space was never something I had to overly consider. I was lucky to be coordinated. It was very instinctual. I remember swimming a lot. I learned how to swim in Australia because my mum spent a fair bit of time there. Australians teaching their kids to swim is just chunking their kids in the water. ‘Enjoy!’

Even though I’m quite tall now, I was a smaller kid. I enjoyed being nimble, hiding places. I loved seeing where my body would fit. If there was a cardboard box, nine times out of ten, I’d see if I could fit in it.

Photography by John Guerrero | Hair by Nai’vasha | Make-up by Sally Branka

SM: Can you tell us about the influence of your mum on your life?

EB: My mum’s attitude has had the biggest influence on me. If you tried to draw a through-line between being an actor and a chef on television, you can’t. The only thing in common is they are both on TV. It was her go-getterness, which was a massive part of my inspiration.

I never set out to be on TV. I started out in theatre. The industry evolved to be more on television and the screen. There was the massive streaming explosion, which is where my path led. She’s someone who, when she puts her mind to something, she’s always gone and done it. That’s my biggest inspiration from her.

SM: What was the dream growing up?

EB: When I was really young, I was a massive gamer. I wanted to be a video games designer. On the drive from Heathrow back into London, you go past the Sega building. There was a massive Sonic the Hedgehog, and I was like, ‘I want to be in that building!’

Because I was really sporty, I thought maybe I would be an athlete. It was a path of least resistance. I was physically really well-abled. I was on every single sports team. It felt like that was where life was going to go. But I always made it into the school play on the side. My logic was that the more extracurriculars I did, the less subjects I didn’t do. If drama club meant I didn’t have to do geography, then great.

I started getting the lead roles in the school play and got into the National Youth Theatre. All these things started happening, which is when my attention turned from performance sports to performing arts.

SM: I feel like people don’t realise how physical acting is…

EB: There’s no stopping. If you’re doing a play on stage, there’s no sitting down for five minutes. You’re constantly switched on, and other people are relying on you. It’s also a lot on the nervous system. A lot of these plays aren’t chronological. They’re emotionally not chronological.

One of the biggest challenges with the roles I’ve taken on is not the physical stamina, but the emotional stamina. You read the script, and you’re like, ‘OK, today you think you’re going to die, but in a couple of hours, you’re shooting your love scene.’ You’re jumping around all the time.

SM: How did drama school teach you to deal with the emotional volatility?

EB: Number one was always having something else to do. If you live, sleep and breathe your character, that’s a dangerous place to be, if you’re not doing it right. That’s why you need a hobby. Actors are quite obsessive. It’s tempting to let it absorb you, but… go paint something!

In The Occupant 

SM: How do you deal with it?

EB: Spinning! One of my best friends is a spin instructor. She does Zoom classes. It’s great. Now I’m producing music. All of this is a great outlet for me. On the more practical side, it’s so easy to think once you’ve been in drama school, you’ve done the hours and hours of training, you do the warm-ups and the cool-downs. When you leave, you’re like, ‘I’m never doing any of that ever again.’

Annoyingly, you actually do need the ten minutes to unwind at the end. You take the things that are useful to you. You might be resistant to the fact that they are useful, but you learn the hard way.

SM: What was the hardest movie to find your balance on, when it comes to the extreme physical and emotional demand?

EB: The one I was least prepared for was Resident Evil. We shot it in South Africa, which was a red zone country in the pandemic. No one was prepared for it. It’s very useful to use things you’re feeling in life to channel into your character, but I was feeling so many emotions. I was wiped. There was no excitement to get up and do it again the next day. ‘How am I going to get through the next week?’ was the mentality.

Resident Evil is a massive project to be number one on the call sheet for. You’re leading the energy, the vibe, the drive. You’re leading the project. There’s a duty there, full stop. I spent a lot of the time hiding how I was actually feeling on the days. I wasn’t truthful about what I needed. There were times I should have spoken up, but I didn’t. It was like, ‘Hey, you’re number one on a Netflix show; take the opportunity, run with it, and don’t say anything.’

When I came to The Occupant, the director Hugo Keijzer is Dutch. He is the most point-blank person I’ve ever met. I knew I had two choices on that set. I can either do what I’ve done, which is like the devil you know. Or I can actually speak my truth and tell him how I’m feeling. That was the best thing I ever did. I sat down in that room with him and was like, ‘I’m fucking tired and we haven’t even started.’

SM: What made you sit down and have that conversation with him? Why were you so exhausted in your life?

EB: I signed onto The Occupant in 2019. It was supposed to be Charlie’s Angels, Run Sweetheart Run, and The Occupant. I took on Resident Evil, not knowing what would happen to the film because of the pandemic.

I looked at Hugo and said, “I’m in a different fucking place now, emotionally and physically, than where I was when I signed onto this project. Here’s what I think about the industry right now. Here’s what I think about being an actor right now.” I let it all out.

He looked at me and said, ‘You have so many parallels with your character and the way she’s feeling in her own life. Let’s use every single one of these emotions. You’re sick and tired? Your character’s sick and fucking tired.’ There were so many parallels. I was so underprepared for the role that it actually brought a massive element of realism to how the character is portrayed.

The character is also massively underprepared for what she has to embark on. She’s thrown into the situation, and so was I. My agent called me and said, ‘By the way, they’ve got the green light for The Occupant. You’re flying out in three weeks.’

SM: When did the car accident happen?

EB: The car accident happened in 2020. This was the timeline. It was the pandemic; the car crash; Resident Evil; then this. Crazy.

SM: So your body was wrecked. After your injury, where did your mind go?

EB: Honestly, the scariest part was the nerve damage on the upper right side of my body. I’d also like to state on the record that it wasn’t my fault! I was on the 10 Freeway, and I got sandwiched. I was stationary, and the van behind me didn’t see where he was going and rammed into me. I got ambulanced out of there.

I had nerve damage in the whole right side of my body. I couldn’t use my right hand properly. I’d pick up a glass, and it would spasm, and it would drop. I had to have a sock wrapped around the doors to grip the handle properly.

I use my body and my hands so much for all of my physical activities. The weapons training. The fight choreography. Honestly, I was terrified. If it wasn’t for my personal trainer and fitness coach, Marius, who I would FaceTime with every single day, I wouldn’t have known what to think.

Gradually, it came back with time and patience. I had to be comfortable with feeling really uncomfortable. Those experiences teach you how to let go. When I went to Hugo and told him I was tired, I truly was. In The Occupant, I was doing all these scenes where I was throwing myself around in the snow and getting knee deep in it. There wasn’t much of a sell happening, if that makes sense?

Resident Evil was comfortable. We’re on a set. It’s been built. The floors have been rubberised and covered with dirt. There is no selling stuff in the Caucasus Mountains. We were there. We were carrying the camera equipment up the side of the mountain every day. Bless the stunt crew who ended up doubling as production hands, cause they were fit and strong enough to move stuff around.

SM: How many people were working on the set of The Occupant?

EB: We had about 40 people on the ground, on the side of the mountain. You know there was my character, Rob Delaney’s character, and then this massive third character – Mother Nature. And she is a diva. I’m just proud to sit here and say that I’ve done a process like this.

Someone asked me recently about my thought process going into those intense scenes? I had a conversation with Leonardo DiCaprio, a brief one. I was like, ‘Ah mate, how do I make this good?’ And he looked me dead in the eye and said, ‘Suffer.’

SM: And did you suffer?

EB: Oh yeah.

SM: How did that conversation occur?

EB: Just Hollywood. He was at a party I was at, and I approached him.

SM: It sounds like you had a really positive experience on this set.

EB: I was just real every day. Imagine me walking onto set on the Caucasus Mountains, trying to go, ‘Hey, great day, everybody! Are we pumped?’ No one is pumped to be there. It was the most real set I’ve ever been on in my career.

SM: One of the cool things about the film is you are solo. Building the world alone…

EB: The Occupant was me, the director, key producers. I brought my best friend with me as my production assistant. Having her every day was a blessing. I just prefer stuff where it feels more real. If you zoom out, like, what are we doing? At the end of the day, what are we doing? We’re just people making art. We’re kids making drawings or dance routines. That’s all we’re really doing, with a significantly bigger budget and crayons.

I enjoy doing those projects from a place of, ‘Let’s set the expectations, and make them realistic. Let’s set our intentions. Let’s not kid ourselves and say we’re going to smash box office records.’ So when we get to the finished product, we’re all really happy with what we’ve made.

We haven’t inflated expectations. We wanted to make a movie about grief, loss, and human hardship. There’s a little bit of sci-fi in there, a pretty large portion of nature documentary in there. We knew what we wanted to do.

SM: When you first read The Occupant, did you realise that it was about grief?

EB: I definitely knew it was about grief. If I had shot this movie in 2019, I would have been acting a lot harder. I would have pretended a lot harder. When I shot it in 2022 after what we all went through, I didn’t have to act much.

SM: What happened in that time period that was hard for you?

EB: I’d spent all these years training and doing my time to finally get to this place in my career. I was in such an exciting spot, but it felt like a massive rug pull to all of the hard work I’d put in. Charlie’s Angels came out in November 2019, and then the pandemic hit in March 2020. I had three months to live in what felt like the place I’d always wanted to be in my career. Then there was this massive rug pull.

The way that existed then will never exist again. I had to come to terms with that, and I was far away from my family. When Resident Evil happened, I’d already been away from my family for a year. That was another six months. We had to put down my dog. All these little things at once.

I could never compare that to the loss the character has felt. I have never lost a sibling to cancer. That is a pain I have never known. But I have felt loss before, and I was able to draw from and bring as much as I could into the character in The Occupant. I know Hugo has had experiences with loss and grief a lot. I was in such close proximity to someone who has felt it.

When someone looks you in the eye and tells you their story, you’re left holding it. You have this responsibility. It feels criminal not to do it justice. This movie is so sensitive and so real. Of all the projects that I’ve done, this is the hill I’d die on. 

The Occupant is out now.