Kaelen Ohm Brings Her Extreme Skier Instincts to the Screen: “I Look for the Steeper Hill”

Kaelen Ohm says the same fearless drive that carried her down mountains as a young skier in small-town Canada now fuels her rise as an actor, filmmaker, and musician.

“For some reason, I have branched out from everything I’ve known from my childhood, into this path completely into the unknown,” Ohm tells The Hollywood Reporter. She went from being a powder hound in Fernie, British Columbia, to starring in The Betrayers, which world premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. Whether executing a steep cliff drop on skis—where “you have to trust and be really present”—or playing Leora, a mistress to a powerful Israeli politician who decides “to go off on her own and make a mark,” Ohm embraces risk.

Over two decades, Ohm has carved out a diverse career, from early TV roles in Hell on Wheels, Taken, and Murdoch Mysteries to a memorable one-episode turn on Condor alongside Brendan Fraser. “Often you are playing against a show’s leads, so I got to walk in and watch Brendan Fraser work for a day,” she recalls.

Ohm’s breakout role came in 2020 as Danielle, a gifted American dancer killed in a car accident in the first episode of Netflix’s mystery series Hit & Run. Her husband, played by Fauda star Lior Raz, investigates her death while Ohm’s character appears in flashbacks.

“That was an act of God,” she says of first auditioning for Raz and the creators of The Killing and The Handmaid’s Tale in New York City. “I thought I was going to meet these incredible creatives with decades-long careers, and I was the least nervous I’d ever been because I thought there was no way this would work out.”

Ohm landed the role, which proved “totally life-changing.” Production was delayed by the COVID pandemic, and when filming resumed, it took place under stringent health precautions.

Raz, she says, was the person who reminded everyone to stay kind and acknowledged the crew’s hard work, creating a collaborative environment. Later, in the MGM+ fantasy horror series From, Ohm played Mariella “Mari” Sinclair, a pediatric nurse battling opioid addiction, in the season four finale.

She had already researched addiction withdrawals for her lead role as an alcoholic woman in the 2023 dark comedy Last County. “When I stepped in to play Mariella, I built on that. I really wanted to do justice to her struggle,” Ohm says, noting that fans who have worked through their own addiction reached out saying the character gave them hope.

Joining From in its second season was a learning experience. “I was under the pressure of joining an established show with people who’d been working together for a whole season already, and so I took it seriously. But I destroyed myself. It took me months to recover,” Ohm recalled.

After years in horror, she has learned to take her work seriously on set while shaking off her character’s demons at night. She recalls an emotional death scene on From where her character is killed by Smiley, played by Jamie McGuire. “He came through the door, and I and Pegah Ghafoori, who plays Fatima, we screamed so loud—the whole crew was laughing hysterically, because we didn’t need to do that, but it just happened. Actors can really get in the moment and forget reality,” she explains.

Ohm has made her home in Nova Scotia, which stood in for middle America on From. There she starred in Ashlea Wessel’s The Miseries, where her character is trapped in a cursed apartment, and Little Lorraine, an indie crime drama that brought her to TIFF for another world premiere.

In director David Bezmozgis’ thriller The Betrayers, set in Crimea, Ohm plays Leora, a young Israeli woman climbing a greasy political ladder alongside a disgraced Israeli politician and a 1980s KGB informer. She wasn’t sure she was right for the part until her father told her about a great-grandmother whose family was forced off their farm in Poland into Russia, only to return after the Russian revolution with little to start over. “Her life story was shockingly similar to a lot of the points of Leora’s upbringing,” Ohm insists, including growing up in Israel and turning her back to return to Ukraine.

Whether choosing acting roles or working as a musician and filmmaker on her multimedia project Amaara, Ohm has learned to trade the beaten track for virgin snow. “For me, when something starts to feel too easy, that’s where I want to find the steeper hill to go down, because complacency in creativity can be a dangerous thing. I want to be a little nervous when I step onto a set, because it means I’m calling myself into action,” she explains.

That off-piste future includes an upcoming role in Sound & Fury, the feature directorial debut of Charles Wahl, as well as directing her own scripted films beyond music videos for Amaara. “I have some scripts in the works and a scripted film is weighing heavily on my mind at the moment, and it’s time to merge the past 20-some years of all of these different things,” Ohm adds.

The Betrayers will debut at the Toronto Film Festival on September 12.

Source link