I am Elena, an NYC based actress who was born and raised in Russia. Acting and work in the community theatre was always a part of my life and the biggest passion since the early childhood.

In my home city Samara, I attended the Samara State Institute of Culture (SSIC) where in 2009 I received a BA in Theatre with an emphasis on directing. For my graduation piece I directed Tennessee Williams’ ‘The Long Goodbye’. Williams is my favorite playwright of all times. In SSIC we would study acting at the same time with the directing. Some of my most memorable roles of that time were Mrs. Higby in Horace McCoy’s ‘They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?’ and Maria Shatova in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s ‘Demons’.

After moving to the USA, I decided to study and explore film as an art that adjoins theatre in many ways. I continued my education at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington and graduated as a Film and Performance major in 2018. That’s when I decided to pursue my acting career in the city, I love the most – New York.

Over the past few years, I’ve worked on several projects including short films such as ‘Bad News’ (director Sheng Tin Shen) which became a part of the Oregon Short Film Festival in 2020, the feature films ‘Fractals’ (director Eric Norcross) and ‘Life of a Zoe’ (dir. Wanly Florexile/Flo X Films).