Ella Balinska Chases Her Bliss

Behold the jet-setting, gloriously chaotic life of Ella Balinska: The actor has just returned from a snowboarding trip in northern Japan when she logs onto Zoom in January from Los Angeles, where she’s celebrating the release of her new romantic drama — Marked Men: Rule + Shaw — and getting ready to announce her first North American tour as her DJ alter ego Linska.

“The progression of how everything’s built from this time last year, it's really exciting,” says Balinska. She kicked off her 2024 by dropping her debut single, “Digital Dream,” a strobing collaboration with DJ-producer Rebūke — and taking it all the way to The Sphere in Las Vegas. How does she approach juggling two very different careers?“Ella Balinska is a sensational actress who is great at finding characters and getting head deep in projects and stories,” she explains. “And I find that Linska is the person you meet day-to-day when I’m not on the job. This is a really nice moment for me to be able to say that.”

Most people know Balinska, 28, for her starring role in the 2019 Charlie’s Angels reboot (alongside Kristen Stewart and Naomi Scott) or Netflix’s Resident Evil series in 2022. But Hollywood actors, even successful ones, know there’s only so much they can control about the business. “It was amazing to have that zero-to-100 launch that I had into my acting career, but there’s a level of anxiety that comes with that," she says. "Because what legs am I standing on? It was quite stressful to feel like I had to maintain that.”

“You know how sometimes you go to a festival and there’s a random child just running around? That was me.”

She sees music, on the other hand, as a vehicle for unrestricted creativity. “I just feel so myself and free and uncensored,” she says. “I’ve arrived at this point where I’m like, ‘You know what? Let me reintroduce myself: ‘My name is Linska, and that’s who I am, and that’s my art.’”

Getting behind the decks is a classic move in the It Girl playbook — just ask Paris Hilton, whose professional partying took her all the way to Tomorrowland and an Ibiza residency in recent years. Balinska, though, was practically raised with a deep appreciation for the craft. Her mom is Lorraine Pascale, the British TV food personality, and her father is Polish businessman Kaz Balinski-Jundzill, who would partner with event organizers to throw music festivals around Ireland. “You know how sometimes you go to a festival and there’s a random child just running around?” Balinska says. “That was me, with little earmuffs walking around. I think that rave culture — the dance culture — has always been part of who I am.”

During one party when she was a teenager, she found herself wandering around the grounds, looking for her phone and her friends, when she ran into her father and began dancing. “And then it was like the heavens opened. It just started sh*tting down with rain,” she recalls. The DJ started playing Otto Knows’ EDM classic “A Million Voices.” “And I was like, this is euphoric! F*ck my phone!” she continues. “That feeling is something that I definitely want to elicit in people who come to watch my shows.”

Balinska isn't leaving Hollywood behind, of course. She’s just expanding her creative horizons — in both fields. “I think I have earned my stripes in the genre film world,” she says. “I was told that if there’s ever an action female character, I am almost always on the list to be considered [for the role]. But there are a couple of projects I’ve been reading which feel like a nice bridge between genres.”

“I’m considering a lot about Ella Balinska, the human, going, ‘This is what I know I’d love to spend the next few months of my time doing.’”

Consider Marked Men one of them. She filmed the movie in Sofia, Bulgaria, and says the cast — including Outer Banks star Chase Stokes and Sydney Taylor from Disney+’s American Born Chinese — grew tight while staying at the same hotel. “It was honestly like a group of friends, like [we were] supposed to portray in the movie. We truly were that in real life,” Balinska says, laughing. At one point, producers gave the cast Nerf guns and an impromptu battle broke out. “To my shock and horror, we discovered we weren’t the only people on the 25th floor of our hotel. It was almost like they were walking through this zone of spray of Nerf gun bullets.”

Balinska’s character, Ayden, is the film’s unexpected comedic standout — the one in the friend group who’s a little bit extra, but that’s exactly why you love them. “I don’t think I’m funny in that role,” she says. “I think she’s just such a savage saying the thing that no one wants to say. She doesn’t have a filter before she says something, because it’s so on the nose what she’s saying, or just so direct and sometimes so obvious, it comes across as quite funny.”

It’s proof that Balinska can do a whole lot more than run from explosions and fight bad guys. And as she picks her next projects, she wants to keep pushing herself — no matter what genre. “Life is short, and these projects can be long,” she says. “I’m definitely in a position now where I’m considering a lot about Ella Balinska, the human, going, ‘This is what I know I’d love to spend the next few months of my time doing.’”

She’s got a new song on the way, too: “Choose Life,” another team-up with Rebūke, drops in late February and has spoken word drawing inspiration from the iconic opening monologue in Trainspotting. “I looked at it, and I was like, ‘Well, people are either gonna love this or hate it,’” she says.

But she loves it — and that’s all that matters to her. “I’m coming from a truthful place,” she says. “There’s no ulterior motive here. I just wanted to do it. I think art for other people is super important, but [art for] yourself is really important too.”

Top Image Credits: Coach jacket, hoodie, and boots, anOnlyChild shirt, talent’s own jewelry, Calzedonia socks