Ella Hope Ballentine (born July 18, 2001) is a Canadian actress of Sicilian and Hungarian descent. She began her acting career as a child actress on the Toronto stage, before appearing on television and in films. Ballentine's portrayal of Anne Shirley in the television film adaptation of the classic Canadian novel, Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery was a critical success, receiving a Joey Award in 2016 and a Canadian Screen Award in 2018.
Career
Ballentine was born in Toronto, Canada to parents Eva and Blake Ballentine. She is a graduate of the Etobicoke School of the Arts in Toronto. She began her acting career as a child actor on the Toronto stage production of The Railway Children, directed by Damian Cruden (2011) for Mirvish Productions. She went on to appear in other stage performances, including the lead role in Numbers, at the Toronto Fringe Festival (2013), and as Little Cosette / Young Eponine in the 25th Anniversary production of Les Misérables (2013), directed by Laurence Connor and James Powell for Mirvish Productions. Also in 2013, she was invited to the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction Gala as one of the performers to read from one of the five prize-nominated titles.
Her first TV role came in a Hallmark Channel movie, Baby's First Christmas (2012), in which she played Karen, a primary character with Casper Van Dien in a lead role. She took on her first film role in Atom Egoyan's feature, The Captive (2013), an official selection for the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. She went on to share the screen with Susan Sarandon, Gil Bellows and Christopher Heyerdahl, in The Calling. In her next larger TV movie role for Lifetime's Clara's Deadly Secret (2013), she played Kate alongside co-stars Emmanuelle Vaugier and Richard Ruccolo.
In the 2015 feature film Standoff, Ballentine portrays one of the lead characters, Bird, a young girl who finds protection with an ex-soldier (played by Thomas Jane) from a hit-man (played by Laurence Fishburne). Although the movie received mixed reviews, Rene S. Garcia, Jr. of Workingauthor.com wrote "And let’s not forget Ella Ballentine. I typically have no faith in child actors, but Ella strikes the perfect tone with her burgeoning independence, but emotional and physical dependency." Eoin Friel from ActionElite felt that "Ella Ballentine almost steals the movie as Bird, the girl being pursued by Sade. The poor thing goes through an absolute nightmare and manages to never be the "annoying kid" in the film; she brings genuine heart to proceedings and is essential for Carter's redemption." In an interview on Collider, Jane stated "[Ella] was pretty wonderful. She was fun, too."
Ballentine's next big role cast her as co-lead in writer/director Bryan Bertino's horror film, The Monster (2016) with co-stars Zoe Kazan, and Scott Speedman. The Monster became an independent success and Ella received Fangoria magazine's 2017 Fangoria Chainsaw Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. "If horror movie performances were given Oscars, [Kazan] would be a shoo-in. Same with Ballentine. These two are so believable," wrote Staci Layne Wilson in Dread Central. Bloody Disgusting, an American horror genre website, called Ballentine "The Most Badass Horror Hero of 2016". According to critics, in the horror movie, The Monster "the spooky-good Ella Ballentine" came up as "a minor revelation." According to the Los Angeles Times Justin Chang "Ballentine gives a fine, fierce performance as a child wise beyond her years and unafraid of confrontation", and Matt Donato from We Got This Covered writes "Ballentine rolls with the punches well for an actress her age, and this shouldn’t be understated".