A decade on from her starry-eyed TV debut at just 10 years old, an East Kilbride ex-pat is enjoying a dream career in showbiz on the other side of the world.
Ellie O’Brien stars as Grace in the top 10 Netflix show My Life With The Walter Boys which was recently renewed for another season.
The popular American teen drama premiered in December and is an adaptation of Ali Novak’s 2014 novel of the same name.
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Ellie’s bubbly character Grace makes friends with the show’s protagonist Jackie Howard who has to start over on a ranch in Colorado with a family of nine boys and one girl when her loved ones are killed in a freak accident in her native New York.
Ellie, a former pupil of St Vincent’s Primary, emigrated to Canada with her family before starting high school and landed the dream role after sending in an audition tape filmed in her bedroom.
(Image: Netflix/Sony Pictures)
The 21-year-old has enjoyed a glittering career since fronting a national cycle safety campaign aged 10. In 2012, the East Kilbride News told how Ellie was the face of Cycling Scotland’s ‘Give me Cycle Space’ TV advertising campaign which was played during the X Factor ad break at the time.
Soon after she landed a role in an ITV drama alongside Stephen Fry and went on to feature in an episode of the hit US series Designated Survivor and sci-fi mini-series Ascension with a host of other IMDB credits to her name.
(Image: IMDB)
Speaking to Lanarkshire Live about her success from across the pond, Ellie said: “I went to UK Theatre School in Glasgow which was a great start for me. My dad had read in the East Kilbride News that they were doing auditions for it and I pleaded with him to take me. I sang a Rod Stewart song and luckily I got in.
“I really took to the acting classes, I wasn’t a shy kid. The coaches were very encouraging and I ended up signing up with an agency through them. I remember feeling nervous for the Cycle Space audition as I really wanted to get it right. It was just a case of getting really lucky and having far too much confidence for a nine-year-old.
(Image: IMDB)
“I’m really grateful to UK Theatre School for getting me in with that agent because that’s what got me started and made me confident in auditions. I got to go on set which was just the best and I decided, this is it, I love this.”
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After moving to Canada, Ellie began acting classes and enrolled in film school. Currently in her final year, she has just directed her first short film ‘The Truth About Church Club’ – a 12 minute comedy short inspired by growing up in South Lanarkshire Catholic schools.
“I’m in film school now doing behind the scenes stuff, directing and writing so it’s been very beneficial to have all that background information and feel like I can situate myself better in the industry as a whole, which is always a nice feeling”, added Ellie.
“I think with acting you can sometimes feel like a bit of a fish out of water, you’re just trying get someone to say yes to you.
(Image: IMDB)
“Directing and producing has been my big goal for the past couple of years. I’ve just directed my first short film for the last year of my degree and it was a lot of fun getting to be on the other side of the camera and do something I’m passionate about.
“I always found it funny that I was a very serious kid so The Truth About Church Club is about this 11-year-old girl who has a lot of questions about how Catholicism works scientifically. It’s more of a comedy than anything else. It’s a laugh and takes a lot of inspiration from me and my pals growing up.”
Remembering her roots before setting off on the road to stardom, Ellie thanked her former headteacher for pushing her on.
“I loved St Vincent’s Primary”, she added. “The head teacher Mrs Tompkins was absolutely wonderful, she made such an impact on me, she always encouraged me. I owe a lot to the teachers at St Vincent’s, they had a huge impact on me which I take everywhere.”
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Now 21 and playing a 15-year-old on hit Netflix series My Life With The Walter Boys, Ellie says she can’t believe her luck that this is her life.
(Image: IMDB)
“When I was 15 I was thinking all these 21-year-old geezers are taking my jobs! They don’t want you to play a teenager when you’re a teenager, they need to wait till you’re old enough to work all the proper hours. It was a lot of trial and error for a long time then just now I feel like I’ve got the hang of things so it’s exciting to feel like you’ve finally got something a bit figured out.
“My Life With the Walter Boys second series will be filming in Calgary later on this year so that will be really exciting.
“I booked that by doing a self tape where I filmed myself doing a scene in my own room, edited it and sent it away into the casting abyss in the hope that someone looked at it. I got some good luck there for sure – it was all luck.
“So many people audition, you just have to keep at it and luckily for me this was the one, and to see it do well is really great.
“Grace is so funny, she gets all these great funny lines. I was really lucky that we had great directors, show runners and writers on set to give that good material to work with.
“Everybody’s lovely, it’s a huge cast so every day feels like a new day, you get to work with someone else and it’s a new wee adventure, it’s lovely.”
After signing to Marion Hunwick actor’s agency in Edinburgh recently, Ellie returned home for an audition for Outlander prequel Blood of My Blood and has since been reaching out to other agencies for potential projects this side of the pond. But for now, she just can’t wait to be back on the Walter Boys set to find out what’s next for Grace.
Ellie said: “Blood of My Blood never went anywhere but I enjoyed the audition process a lot, it was good practice for me. It’s always difficult proving yourself to different casting directors but I’ve got that hunger, it’s been a nice new challenge for me.
“I’ll graduate this year and I get to go back to Walter Boys in the summer. I hope to keep working on the show, I really enjoy working with all those guys. Hopefully the audiences love it as it would be a dream to do another year of it.”
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