Best known for her iconic turns in Little Shop of Horrors and Pushing Daisies, Ellen Greene returns to the screen in Beatrix Is Invisible, a poignant short film by writer-director Alex Farias that premiered at the 2025 Palm Springs International ShortFest, where it won the Audience Award for Best Live-Action Short.
In the film, Greene stars as Beatrix, a grandmother and widow struggling to feel seen in a world that seems to have moved on without her. Surrounded by color and life, Beatrix’s inner world is one of quiet turmoil, a contrast Greene captures with her trademark warmth and emotional precision.
“When I start with a character, I just enter her heart,” Greene told me. “The center of Beatrix’s heart has a bit of a hole. She’s warm and generous, but inside there’s turmoil because she doesn’t feel she’s part of the world anymore. She’s no longer a wife, her daughter’s grown, and she’s searching for who she is.”
Greene’s performance, anchored in restraint and empathy, reflects her long-held belief in authenticity over artifice. “You just live,” she said. “Once you build a character, it’s there. You don’t think about it. You just react, like in life.”
That sense of intuitive connection extends to her process for choosing roles. “It’s always about the work,” she said. “Does it hit me in my heart? Because if it hits me, it’s going to hit you.”
While Greene has spent decades shaping unforgettable characters, she still speaks with childlike joy when revisiting past projects. When I mentioned how much I loved her as Goldie in Rock-A-Doodle, a favorite from my own childhood now shared with my kids, she lit up with delight. “Oh, that was Don Bluth! And Glen Campbell, he was a charmer,” she recalled, laughing. “It was so much fun. They wanted it to be very Audrey-esque, and I loved the music.”
That blend of tenderness and spirit defines both Greene and Beatrix Is Invisible, a film that reminds us how the search for connection, purpose, and joy never really ends, no matter how invisible we might sometimes feel.
Jessie Hobson