Meet Eleanor Wells

We recently connected with Eleanor Wells and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Eleanor, thank you so much for joining us today. There are so many topics we could discuss, but perhaps one of the most relevant is empathy because it’s at the core of great leadership and so we’d love to hear about how you developed your empathy?

From the time I was young, it was always impressed on me that you never really know what’s going on in a person’s life. “Treat other people the way you want to be treated,” was always the golden rule. I think I’ve always been a curious person, and there’s something sad about how there will be experiences that I’ll never personally have, times I’ll never live through and places I’ll never be from. I started acting training classes when I was in third grade, and I thought I was going to be an actor. When you’re playing another role, you get to be another person for a while. I don’t do it much these days, but whenever I do act, I always commit to embodying the role fully. There’s also a lot of crossover with acting and writing/filmmaking. With the latter, you have a birds-eye view of all of the characters, how they interact, and why the do the things that they do.

I watch a lot of movies, read books, see plays when I can–I just love all kinds of stories. I always go back to the Sylvia Plath quote about living and feeling all the shades of existence. You realize just how much we’re all driven by the same things.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I am a writer, filmmaker and actress who is drawn to projects that highlight the nuance and diversity of the human experience. My broad goal is always to encourage others to see the world from another

My production company, Cinderella Pictures, was founded in 2020 with the mission of highlighting nuanced stories from a female perspective. Much of storytelling canon has been shaped by, for and about men. I love many of these stories and find so much relate to in term, but there’s so much depth about what it means to be a woman in this world that I think is just waiting to be unearthed. We’ve done one short film, many staged readings, and are in pre-production on our debut feature film. So Long Farewell is a story that is pulled from my experiences growing up in the suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It follows an ensemble of gifted theater students who return to their small town in their mid-twenties for the funeral of a former classmate. We go back and forth in time and explore the fleeting nature of time, and only constant in life is that everything is always changing. I hope it will speak to a type of coming-of-age I rarely see depicted or discussed, the one that happens in our mid-twenties. We did a staged reading of it back in January that is available to watch on YouTube, and I can’t wait to share more about the film.

In regards to to Cinderella Pictures itself, my longterm goal is to connect with other likeminded creatives and produce.

Past that, I released my debut novel, All Our Yesterdays, in June. It’s a poignant love story set across the 2000s as a painter and actress becomes involved with a musician on the brink of worldwide fame, and how that affects their relationship as the years pass and how each character deals with the inevitably of mortality and legacy. I also just announced the spinoff novel, Fairytale, which will be released in 2025.

No matter the medium, I always seek to tell stories that are honest, and inspire reflection. That’s always my goal. Whether or not I succeed is up to you, but no matter what I always appreciate the time and consideration.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

1. The most important one is undoubtedly resilience. A career in the arts is hard. I loathe stories of overnight successes because, behind each one, there’s often years of failure, then getting up and doing it again, then failing again, and somehow being crazy enough to keep going. I was always told “if you quit or you don’t try, it’s always going to be a no.” What’s often harder to deal with then setbacks is stagnation, because that leads to self-doubt, and self-doubt leads to you questioning all of your life choices. Knowing my why has always been what gets me through tough times. If there’s something else you want to explore, I encourage it. For me, there’s never been any other option. I’ve diversified my output in ways I only could have dreamed of years ago, but I always find myself being drawn back to creative outlets because there’s nothing else like it.

2. Curiosity. There’s a reason people often use “incurious” as a criticism of creatives. I’ve always seen storytelling as the study of people, and that involves willing to expand beyond your worldview and being able to understand why every character does what they do. I can often tell when thought is being put behind a character and when it’s not. My favorite thing is being able to picture the lives that characters have off-page/stage/screen. People are messy and contradictory. We all exist in shades of gray. I think there’s a natural tendency with writers to portray the world as we want it to be, but it takes curiosity to understand the differences in the way others see the world.

3. Grace. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, both personally and professionally, and I’ve done and said things I’m not proud of. I have a tendency to be very self-critical and let myself marinate in all the things I’d rather forget, thinking they’re what truly define me rather than the opposite. Because of my own struggles with mental health, these thoughts can often be all-consuming, but a favorite mantra of mine is, “you did the best with the information and experience you had a time,” followed closely with, “it’s gone, and it can’t hurt you anymore.” No one is perfect, and I don’t look for the people in my life to be, either. I really think the true test of your character is how you respond to and grow from mistakes.

Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?

While a more recent discovery in the grand scheme of my life, I’ll always shill for Anne Lamott’s Bird By Bird: Some Instructions and Writing and Life. It’s unlike any other writing advice book I’ve ever read. It’s hardly a craft book at all, and instead it so beautifully encapsulates why writing (and really, any sort of art) is both powerful and necessary. I think every artist should read it at least once in their life. I discovered it for the first time when I was at a crossroads in both my personal and professional life. Now that I’ve published a novel and have a few films out in the world, I can fully appreciate her advice about how the craft has to be its own reward. I find myself revisiting it every time I hit a milestone in my still-budding career. I think what I resonate with the most is that the work doesn’t have to be perfect. It just needs to be honest.

However, my favorite book of all time is The Giver. It’s hard to imagine another ever dethroning it. It’s one that I get something new out of every time I read it. It’s so beautiful in both the simplicity and care with which it tells its story. Its message of pleasure being unable to exist without pain is something that will always be timeless and relevant, especially in our world today where we don’t like to confront unpleasant feelings, but without them, we won’t ever experience anything fully. I always cry during the scene where Jonas asks his parents if they love him. Thematically, it definitely feels like an offshoot of Brave New World (another one of my favorites).

Contact Info:

• Website: https://ebrynnw.wixsite.com/eleanorwells
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eleanorwellswriter/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@cinderellamotionpictures

Image Credits

1: Nick Muller
2: Sandee Stadler
3: Iva Trocke
4. Avery Norris, Alysia VanDusen, Beckie Echegary, Eric Lamont and Maisie Jones in The Castle (2021-22)
5. Greg Mills, Paige Henderson, and Margaret Glaser in Eagle Rock (2019) (dp. Conor Soucy)
6. Jarrod Langwinski and Kimberly Laberge in Time in a Bottle (2022) (dp. Scott Grenke)