Commack, NY - April 15, 2016 - Up-and-coming actress and Long Island native Melanie Ehrlich will be making her Hollywood debut alongside Matt Damon in Alexander Payne’s upcoming film, Downsizing. The New York native was handpicked by Mr. Payne after auditioning for the movie in December, and flew out to film last week in LA.
Born and raised in Commack, Ehrlich is a bicoastal actress and voiceover talent, working not only on-camera in film, TV and commercials, but also behind the mic in animation and video games. She was recently featured in a national Dish Network commercial with Project Runway’s Tim Gunn, and will be recurring as “Ali” in the new highly-anticipated, and highly secretive, Netflix series, The OA. Ehrlich’s fun, quirky nature and driven approach to her work has led to an impressively untraditional career path, including a 1.5-yearlong stint in South Korea (and the ability to speak the language) and a performance at Carnegie Hall earlier this year.
Ehrlich says of her experience working on Downsizing, “Alexander Payne is an absolutely brilliant director, and Matt Damon was incredible to work with too. Honestly, I spent most of the day just in awe of how brilliant they were, watching them work! I’m incredibly honored to be making my Hollywood debut in this fantastic film with this wonderful cast and crew.”
Downsizing, written by Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor (Sideways, Election), tells the story of an Omaha man who undergoes a new process that reduces people to a tiny fraction of their size, and moves to one of the many communities of small people that are sprouting up around the world. This is Mr. Payne's seventh full-length feature, and his most ambitious to date. Filming is scheduled to take place mostly in Toronto over the next four months.
Downsizing stars Matt Damon and Kristen Wiig, and also features Christoph Waltz, Alec Baldwin, Jason Sudeikis, and Neil Patrick Harris. The movie is scheduled for theatrical release on December 25th, 2017. For more information on Melanie Ehrlich and Downsizing, visit her website.