Erin Kellyman on Bonding with June Squibb & Being the Face of Loewe

“You want the long story or the short story?” 

Erin Kellyman is seated behind a laptop in her hotel room in Paris, fresh from her first fashion show — for Loewe, of which she is a new face. The fashion experience thus far has been a “f–king dream” and part of the new stage the British actress finds herself in.

“It is just a really exciting time in my life, and I feel just so grateful,” Kellyman says.

But as mentioned, it’s been a journey for her to get here. 

The 27-year-old, who grew up in Birmingham, England, was super into gymnastics as a kid but “was mediocre at best,” she admits. When she declared at age 10 that gymnastics was what she wanted to do with her life, her mom gave her a bit of a reality check. 

“She said, ‘If you want to be a gymnast, you’re going to have to be in the gym before school, after school, seven days a week; you really need to knuckle down now.’ And I was like, ‘That’s not going to happen. I’m not going to do that,’” Kellyman says.

As a child she’d done some modeling, which she hated, but it was the only other thing she knew she could do. Soon she found herself at an audition that involved improvising in a room with cameras, and she recalls walking out of the room elated. 

“I was like, ‘Mom, that was different. Whatever that is, I want to do that.’”

From there she joined an acting program in Nottingham, where “figuring yourself out comes first before figuring out how to be an actor.” She didn’t touch a script until she was 16, and credits the experience with her ultimate success of becoming an actor; when she finally was ready to audition, she booked the project straight away and has been working ever since. 

“Thank god it’s worked out. I have no idea what else I’d do,” she says. 

Her breakout role comes courtesy of Scarlett Johansson in her directorial debut, “Eleanor the Great.” Kellyman stars alongside June Squibb as a student, Nina, who strikes up an unlikely friendship with a 94-year-old woman who has recently returned back to New York from Florida.

She and Squibb became fast friends prior to filming.

“It didn’t really feel like we were trying to build chemistry. I think we both felt like we’d forgotten that I guess we needed chemistry for the movie. We just spent a couple weeks before we started shooting hanging out, and I don’t think either of us had in mind that we were working toward building a connection,” she says. “We were in the same apartment building, and so we were hanging out a bunch. And then by the time we were shooting, somebody was like ‘You guys should get together, hang out.’ And we were like, ‘Oh, we’ve done that almost every night.’”

Kellyman also appears in the “28 Days Later” franchise, first in “28 Years Later” earlier this year and soon “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple,” set to be released next June.

“My character is extremely complex, and I mean, listen, the characters are completely different, but she’s similar to Nina in that they have a real arc in their stories and they both find themselves a little bit, which I was really drawn to,” she says. “It was a complete 180 [from ‘Eleanor’]…which is exactly what I want to be doing.”