Celeste O’Connor

Medicine Can Wait

Celeste O’Connor was born in Nairobi and raised in Baltimore. In 2017, she landed her first professional role in the independent film Wetlands. She wasn't obsessively chasing fame at the time, since her plans centered on public health at Johns Hopkins University.

Acting was just a plan B.

In 2019, she starred in Selah and the Spades. This Amazon Studios teen drama put her name on the radar of Los Angeles casting directors. She played Paloma, and her performance stood out for a naturalness that contrasted with the stiffness of other young actors of her generation.

But balancing textbooks and the spotlight became unsustainable. So she decided to combine medical studies with shoots that increasingly demanded more time away from Maryland.

The Sony Franchise Assault

Her move into big-budget film came in 2021 with Ghostbusters: Afterlife. She played Lucky Domingo and shared the screen with Paul Rudd. The film grossed over $200 million worldwide and helped mainstream audiences put a face to someone who until then had only moved in niche circles.

Before facing ghosts, she starred in Freaky in 2020 alongside Vince Vaughn. In this horror comedy, she played Nyla Chones and proved she could handle the pacing of physical action scenes without losing dramatic credibility.

Then came the chance to play a superhero.

In 2024, she joined Sony's Spider-Man universe in Madame Web. She played Mattie Franklin, one of three young women destined to become Spider-Woman. The film's budget exceeded 80 million dollars, although critical reception was cold after its February release.

Shortly after, she returned as Lucky in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. This sequel moved the action to New York and gave her character a more technical arc within the ghost-hunting team.

Production and Gender Perspective

Identifies as nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns. In 2020, she founded Pocit to produce audiovisual content centered on stories about people of color. Her vision of film goes far beyond standing in front of a camera following a director's orders.

The project aims to fund short films and experimental pieces that don't find a place at the major studios in California.

In 2023, she appeared in A Good Person under the direction of Zach Braff. She worked alongside Morgan Freeman and Florence Pugh in a drama about grief and addiction that had nothing to do with the explosions of her previous projects.

Because control over her career is her absolute priority.

Filming the visual effects scenes at the Leavesden studios for the Ghostbusters franchise took twelve consecutive weeks. The production team used more than 50 liters of viscous gelatin to simulate the trail left by the spirits on set.