We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sophie Troyer Rusin. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sophie below.

Sophie, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today One of our favorite things to hear about is stories around the nicest thing someone has done for someone else – what’s the nicest thing someone has ever done for you?

I moved to Los Angeles in the fall of 2021, and those first few months were rough. I’ve always been confident in my work, but at the time I had a lot of fears about entering the industry that, looking back, were so unnecessary. When it came time to visit family for the holidays that year, I sat in LAX waiting for my red-eye flight riddled with anxiety and close to tears. A man looking for a seat asked if the one next to me was empty, which of course it was. He then began talking to me about my home town, which freaked me out because I wasn’t flying directly there and had nothing on me indicating where I was from – I assumed he was either A) Hacking my person data through the wifi or B) Psychic. But we kept the conversation going and when I told him I was an actor he asked me if I’d ever had the chance to be on set. I told him I hadn’t yet, and that’s when he invited me to work background on a Project he was 1st Assistant Directing. I still can’t believe how lucky I was to have met such a kind person who would offer an amazing opportunity to a stranger just because we were from the same home town. Which, by the way, he knew because he was on the direct flight at the same gate just behind us and accidentally and correctly assumed that’s where I was going. I got to be a part of the set of WEIRD: THE AL YANKOVIC STORY, and I couldn’t have asked for a better first on-set experience. Jason C. Brown – the 1st AD of the now Emmy winning movie – gave me my first job, brought me on as part of the production team of many short films, and has been a mentor to me since then. I will always be grateful for everything he’s done for me and I will always remember that chance and coincidence can impact your life in the most wonderfully unexpected ways.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m an actor, a writer, a filmmaker, and a lover of everything from romance to necromancy. Like Morticia Addams, but blonder. I graduated from The American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 2022 where I studied the craft of acting with focuses in Shakespeare, Musical Theatre, and International Dialects. I am currently taking classes at UCLA as part of their extension program to study Film Directing. I have a deep-seated love of all things gothic and ghostly and have had the opportunity to be a part of several horror shorts including LUNA (Dir. Kevin Martinez) and THE HEALING (Dir. Julia Lopez). I’ve also gotten the chance to gain modeling experience through my frequent collaborations with Daydream Artistry, an incredibly talented team of beauty and SFX makeup artists. My writing consists mostly of spec scripts, but the goal is to move forward with as projects as possible as soon as can be managed! In the near future, I will be performing in Much Ado About Nothing for the Hollywood Fringe Festival beginning June 8th at The Hudson Theater – returning to my roots as a theatre kid.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

I love working on horror projects, probably because I grew up in a haunted house, I was raised by an OG new wave goth, and I had a really niche obsession with vampire movies. That being said, there are still some horror classics that’ve been left unchecked on my watchlist because I’m still afraid that they’ll be too scary and I won’t know until it’s too late. But there’s a quote I often think about from one of my favorite directors, Mike Flanagan, who says that horror, “Let’s us feel fear and get braver.” This philosophy resonated with me not only in relation to the horror genre, but in relation to the industry as a whole. Any time we as artists are faced with the unknown or with a new challenge, we have to take what’s scary and make it work for us. Artists in horror know this better than most, so using them as a resource via interviews, articles, and the actual works they create are an incredibly valuable resource. Every actor has been told to take their stage fright and use the nerves to give the scene more energy. It’s all the same idea. If you take something horrifying and shape it into something beautiful, then you’ll end up with something totally unique that brings light without leaving behind the dark.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Being an Aquarius, a key struggle of mine is my need to be understood matched with my need to express myself in ways that most people do not understand. So when I am able to make my friends and coworkers laugh, in conversation or in my writing, or when I get to perform something shocking or evocative that allows me to express myself visually, there’s nothing like it in the world. My sense of humor is something I pride myself on and getting to share that in my work is so freeing. I think putting this together with the darker, ooky-spooky parts of my brain makes me a bit of a peculiar entanglement of contradictions – but as I may have mentioned I am an Aquarius.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm13895934/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_1_nm_7_q_sophie%2520rusin
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sophie_troyer_rusin/