Octavia Perelis on Finding Connection Through Acting, Film, and Theater

With a growing slate of theater and independent film projects, the New York-based actress and filmmaker is exploring stories of grief, love, loneliness, anxiety, and resilience.

For Octavia Perelis, acting is ultimately about connection. Across theater and independent film, the actress has gravitated toward characters confronting grief, anxiety, loneliness, love, addiction and the consequences of life-changing decisions. At the same time, her work is expanding beyond performance, with Perelis taking on directing and writing as she develops her own projects.

“I stand out because I like helping people,” Perelis says. “When I watch movies, they make me feel less alone and more accompanied, and they make me feel that what I feel is not so isolated, and that a lot of people feel it too.”

That feeling of recognition is at the heart of how Perelis approaches her work. For her, a successful performance is not only about inhabiting a character; it is about creating an emotional bridge between that character and the person watching.

Her 2026 began onstage with The King of Cats: The Death of Tybalt, written and directed by Gus Montano and produced by 6A Production Company. Perelis found the production through Backstage and submitted for the role before attending an in-person callback on January 4 with Montano and producer Noni Alley. Rehearsals began immediately, leading to performances on February 12, 15 and 17 at Chain Theatre in Manhattan.

 The production was part of the Chain Theatre One-Act Festival Winter Edition, Program 22. A two-actor family drama, the play explores grief and depression through the story of a young man dealing with the death of his father. Perelis played Maria, who is tasked with caring for her cousin as he struggles with depression following his father's passing. For Perelis, Maria is more than a supporting presence within the story. She becomes part of the emotional force that keeps another character from remaining trapped in his grief. After the third performance, the production held a Q&A with a full room, giving the performers an opportunity to connect directly with the audience. The festival also featured Jesse Eisenberg directing Jeryl Brunner's Sweet Tart, starring Ralph Macchio, in Program 1. 

Her screen work soon expanded into a different kind of experience with The E-Lazarus Project, directed by Elena Sartor. Built around Emma Lazarus' The New Colossus, the project brings together 15 female actresses from around the world, representing 15 accents, 15 stories and 15 identities. The project was conceived as a peaceful artistic response to hatred and draws on the poem's associations with resilience, empathy and freedom. The The E-Lazarus Project was filmed in a single day on February 28th.

The range of Octavia's work became even more apparent in May. In On Feeling, Human, directed by Sasha Shablii, she plays Alma, a woman who conceals her anxiety behind an image of spirituality and emotional groundedness. The existential drama was filmed on May 8, following Perelis' Backstage submission and in-person callback.

At the same time, she was developing one of her most personal creative projects to date. She co-directed and stars in Watershed, a psychological drama made with Tula Gout. Filmed over seven days in May, the film follows Talia, a young woman struggling with depression and family problems who develops a drug problem. The story unfolds through two timelines, with Perelis and Gout each playing different versions of Talia. In one timeline, Talia chooses sobriety after witnessing her friend overdose; in the other, she falls deeper into her depression.The project explores the way a single decision can change the trajectory of a person's life, while also giving Perelis the opportunity to work simultaneously as performer and director. The film is currently in post-production.

 That interest in difficult choices continues in One Second, a psychological drama directed by Nina Demarchi, founder of Cena Viva Productions. Perelis was offered her role directly by Demarchi, without an audition. The film follows two friends returning from a party while drunk driving when they hit someone and flee the scene. Once they arrive home, Perelis' character wants to return and face what happened, while the friend who was driving becomes overwhelmed by fear and denial. Shot on June 7, One Second has been submitted to the Lee Strasberg Film Festival, where Al Pacino is among the festival's six jurors. The filmmakers are awaiting confirmation and plan to submit the film to additional festivals as part of its festival circuit following further changes to the project.

Then came August 1st, a character-driven romantic drama directed by Helena Franco, which Perelis co-wrote with Demarchi and in which she plays Bella. The film follows two different relationships unfolding across New York on the same night: one between two strangers and another between former lovers. Perelis' Bella is a hopeless romantic whose plans to watch jazz with friends unexpectedly open the possibility of what could become one of the most magical nights of her life. Alongside Peter, Bella forms one of the film's two central couples, while Mari and Leo represent the other relationship. Shot over three days, August 1–3, the film is currently being edited and is expected to be completed in December before entering the festival circuit. New York becomes an important part of the emotional landscape of August 1st. The city provides the backdrop for encounters that might otherwise never happen, allowing the film to explore how a single night can bring strangers together while forcing former lovers to reconsider what remains between them.

 Perelis' next project, Invisible, directed by Michael Brontoli, returns to the question of connection from a more intimate angle. The character-driven drama follows a lonely man who feels invisible until he unexpectedly connects with his neighbor. Perelis plays Grace, the lead supporting character, a woman quietly struggling within her own relationship who unexpectedly finds friendship and connection with her neighbor. The film was shot over two days, August 9 and 10. Once again, the role came directly to Perelis, offered by one of the writers without an audition. Invisible has also been submitted to the Lee Strasberg Film Festival and is awaiting confirmation, with additional festival submissions planned.

Her most recent production took her outside New York. Perelis appears in Angel Slice, a rom-com thriller written and directed by Cole Gustafson, a former Maryland International Film Festival winner for Best Student Film. The story follows a timid delivery boy who receives a girl's phone number and gathers the courage to make a move, only to discover that the number was not given to him for romance, but for her safety.

Perelis appears in the opening scene as Drunk Woman, a supporting character who orders a pizza and unsuccessfully attempts to seduce the main character. Although the production lasted five days, Perelis filmed on August 19. She initially submitted through Backstage and was eventually offered the role. The production was casting local Pennsylvania actors, but the team made an exception for her. Although the role was unpaid, the production covered her transportation from New York City to Downingtown, Pennsylvania, as well as her housing and meals. The production has just wrapped.

Taken together, Perelis' recent work reveals an artist increasingly interested in stories where the internal lives of characters become the story itself. Her performances move through grief, depression, anxiety, romance, fear, addiction and loneliness, but they repeatedly return to the same larger question: how do people find one another when life makes connection difficult?

That question also explains the importance Perelis places on the audience. “When I watch movies, they make me feel less alone and more accompanied,” she says.

It is a philosophy that informs not only the characters she chooses, but the kind of artist she is becoming. With Watershed, she stepped into directing. With August 1st, she expanded into screenwriting. Through her performances, she continues to explore characters whose experiences can make an audience recognize something of itself.

Several of her projects are now moving through post-production and toward the festival circuit, while her work continues to span theater, film and independent creative collaborations.

For Perelis, however, the ambition is not simply to accumulate credits. It is to make work that reaches people. To perform, in her view, is to offer someone else a moment of recognition — the feeling that an emotion they thought belonged only to them has been experienced by someone else, too.