Erin Kellyman has spent two of the films we have reviewed under a mask or a cult haircut, one determined young rebel in a crowd of them. She is plainly capable of more; the screen work we have seen has not yet asked her for it.
Fi1m perspective
In Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) she comes at Woody Harrelson's crew out of the snow, masked, at the head of the Cloud Riders, while a freight train runs along a mountainside. In 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026) she is Jimmy Ink, one of a cult of Jimmys in the bob and shell suit of the man they follow. Twice, then, in the films of hers we have reviewed, a costume department has done its best to stop us telling her apart from the people beside her. It is a fair summary of where the career has been.
The shape of it is franchise. British television first, a regular part in Raised by Wolves (2015–2016) and Les Misérables (2018) for the BBC, then Enfys Nest, which took her to America. She was Karli Morgenthau, the radical leader of the Flag Smashers, in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021), and Jade Claymore, a co-lead with a queer romance, in Willow (2022), with The Green Knight (2021) and Blitz (2024) either side. The part is nearly always a determined young woman who will not do as she is told, and she knows it: "I can't imagine not playing a person like that. I always want to play that rebellious side."
What she is good at, on the evidence we have, is the physical side of that. She does her own stunts, and in Solo she is a clear figure in a set piece Pietro Scalia cuts with more care than the rest of the film gets, which is harder than it sounds when the face is covered. She can also sit inside a large American cast, on the accent, without disappearing. Whether she can hold a scene on her face alone, the films we have seen did not let her show.
The Bone Temple is the frustrating case. We were horrified the first time the Jimmys hurt someone on Jimmy Crystal's word, and by the third time we were tired, and none of that is the actors' fault. Garland has written a cult with one creed and one face, and Kellyman, like Emma Laird and Connor Newall beside her, is asked to repeat it at length. Nia DaCosta's film is good when Ralph Fiennes and his tower of skulls are on screen; the Jimmys are the half we sat through.
Her reputation says the answer lies elsewhere: that the intimate scenes of Eleanor the Great (2025), her first major contemporary dramatic part, as Nina Davis in Scarlett Johansson's first film as director, are where she does her best work. We have not reviewed it and will not judge it. What we can say is that she has spent a decade being useful to other people's franchises and has yet to turn up in a film on our pages that wanted to look at her for longer than a stunt. Someone should give her a quiet room and a close-up and find out.
Biography
Erin Mae Kellyman (born 17 October 1998) is a British actress from Tamworth, Staffordshire. She trained at the Nottingham Television Workshop after attending Birmingham Ormiston Academy and The Rawlett School.
Kellyman first gained notice in the Channel 4 sitcom Raised by Wolves (2015–2016) and the BBC adaptation of Les Misérables (2018) as Éponine. Her film roles include Enfys Nest in Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), Winifred in The Green Knight (2021), and Doris in Blitz (2024). On television she has played Karli Morgenthau in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021) and Jade Claymore in Willow (2022). She appears as Jimmy Ink in both 28 Years Later (2025) and its sequel 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026).
