Ella Rubin first caught Hollywood’s gaze as Anne Hathaway’s daughter in the glossy age-gap romcom The Idea of You. But it’s in a much grittier, bloodier genre that she’s now putting down roots. Spoiler alert: things are about to get gnarly.
“You know what’s insane? I did it.”
At 23, Ella Rubin is a woman who follows through: she finally made it to Coachella. Just over a year ago, we first met over Zoom—on a call not unlike this one—to talk about her breakout role in Michael Showalter’s starry-eyed adaptation of The Idea of You. Ella played Izzy, daughter to Anne Hathaway’s Solène, the teen who hauls her mum to Coachella to see her favourite boy band—only for said mum to catch feelings for the lead singer, a Gen Z dreamboat played by Nicolas Galitzine. What follows is, arguably, the most Wattpad-coded love story ever put to screen. You’ve seen it. You’ve swooned. Maybe more than once.
And yet, despite Coachella serving as the glittery backdrop for her on-screen breakout, Ella had never actually set foot in the desert. That, we agreed at the time, needed correcting. “I’m not really a Coachella person and I don’t think big crowds are super my vibe,” she tells me. “But we happened to get tickets, and it seemed like a wasted opportunity not to go and see what the deal is for the first time. And I keep having these moments where I’m admitting to myself…” she pauses, grinning. “That I’m not some edgy, cool person—as if it hasn’t always been the case,” she laughs. “But I had the time of my life. I couldn’t believe how much fun I was having.”
Left: Ella wears suit 8 OTHER REASONS; shirt& tie VALENTINO. Right: Ella wears top MIUMIU; shorts VINTAGE; socks ADIDAS; shoes BYFAR
The past year, in many ways, has been about Ella getting to know a version of herself she hadn’t properly met before. While we spoke over Zoom for this interview, she swapped the usual clatter and chaos of her Manhattan roots for a palm-lined, Vitamin D-soaked stint in Los Angeles. “It’s been weirdly amazing,” she smiles, contemplating the fact that her work life is bringing her to LA more often.
“I never thought I’d admit it, but I feel very much not dragged down by LA, which is sort of the opposite of how it was pitched to me.” She still claims her New Yorker status—“still very much a New Yorker,” she insists—but there’s a new openness, a curiosity, that hints LA might not just be a pit stop. It might actually be… working.
And while LA may have softened her edges, it’s also sharpened her next moves. She now has an Oscar-winning film on her résumé, courtesy of a brief but unforgettable turn in Sean Baker’s Anora, which took home Best Picture at this year’s Academy Awards. Ella played the sharp-tongued younger sister of Mikey Madison’s title character—a small role, but one that left its mark in a film packed with gut-punch performances. And, perhaps more unexpectedly, she’s carving out space among horror’s new wave of scream queens. In 2024 alone, she wrapped two major genre projects: Until Dawn, David F. Sandberg’s adaptation of the cult video game, and Netflix’s hotly anticipated Fear Street: Prom Queen, directed by Matt Palmer.
“I just love being part of horror,” she says. “I think it’s such a perfect medium to juice everything you have inside of you, physically and emotionally. As an actor, I really value effort and pushing myself, and in horror it’s hard to ever do too much.”
Has she always been brave enough to stomach all that gore, though? “I always was open [to the genre], but truthfully, I was quite squeamish and scared of horror before getting to do a bit of it,” she laughs. “And so once I got Fear Street and Until Dawn, I sort of decided I had to buck up and watch every single horror film that I could possibly fit in. It was wild.”
Until Dawn also marks Ella’s debut as a leading lady—an experience she calls the “most demanding and challenging” of her career. But the film demanded more than just stamina; it called for full physical and emotional surrender.
“My makeup artist was so incredible at making me look like shit in this movie, and I thank her for it every day,” she laughs. “To be told and assigned to look as haggard and disgusting and, you know, mangled as possible on camera definitely was a new thing to explore, because so much of this work is in line with looking pretty, and it’s asking you to present, you know, quote-unquote ‘properly.’ And I think being improper, and sort of getting to be a little carnal in some way, was really freeing and really exciting to me,” she says. “The connection between myself and my body and the character is just something I had never experienced before.”
The shoot spanned three months, with Ella in front of the camera six days a week, every single week. “I’d get home and shut my eyes immediately knowing that in six hours I would be covered in dirt and blood again, doing the exact same scene for the next five days,” she says. “One of the biggest factors for me was, without going too insane, keeping myself in a state of anxiety and panic and sadness. We were shooting too often for me to really come down. And if I did, it would just be too difficult to rev myself back up. In the most actor-y, annoying way, allowing myself to physically meld into whatever my character’s feeling was really intense. But at the same time, I have to imagine that it helped me embody the situations that they were in—or at least I hope I did.”
Chilling adventures aside, we catch up just after Ella’s latest casting announcement—she’ll star as the lead in Sterling Point, Amazon Studios’ highly anticipated project from writer-director Megan Park. While the plot remains tightly under wraps, Ella’s excitement is already at full volume. “I’m pinching myself. Megan Park is a fucking perfect genius, a wonderful, magical person. She’s not real. I’m so excited,” she beams. “It’s rare to feel so completely connected to your writer-director, and I think Megan and I just really get each other in a way that’s honestly emotional. I just feel so artistically seen by her.” Consider us preemptively obsessed.
Pre-order the Summer 25 issue now.
Photography by Sarah Pardini
Styling by Siena Montesano
Words by Sofia Ferreira
Hair by Ericka Verrett at A-Frame Agency
Make-up by Jen Tioseco at A-Frame Agency
Videography by Abir Hashem