Cleopatra Coleman

From the Melbourne Suburbs to Post-Apocalyptic Comedy

Cleopatra Coleman grew up in Australia's Blue Mountains, surrounded by sheet music and choreography. Her father was a musician from New Jersey, and her mother was a belly dancer with Jamaican roots. That bohemian environment shaped how she understood acting long before she turned ten.

In 2004 she landed her first major role in the science fiction series Silversun. It was a modest production, but it caught the attention of casting directors. Shortly after, she joined the cast of Neighbours, playing Glenn Forrest for ten episodes.

And the gamble paid off.

In 2012, she traveled to the United States to take part in Step Up Revolution. It was a commercial dance film where her physical training was key to landing the role. But the real change of pace came in 2015 with The Last Man on Earth.

There, she played Erica Dundee for four full seasons. On this Fox series, she shared the screen with Will Forte and learned to master dry comedic timing in a high-budget production environment.

The Risk of Authorship and Genre Cinema

In 2018 she decided acting wasn't enough and wrote the screenplay for Hover. It is a science fiction film about killer drones set in a future where water is scarce. Critics were not especially kind to the final result.

But Coleman never stopped looking for projects that broke away from the conventional. In 2019, she starred in In the Shadow of the Moon for Netflix. In this time-travel thriller, she played an assassin who reappears every nine years to commit inexplicable crimes.

Brandon Cronenberg chose her in 2023 to star in Infinity Pool alongside Alexander Skarsgård. The shoot was complicated, filmed on location in Croatia and Hungary. The film stands out for its graphic violence and a nightmarish tourist atmosphere that divided audiences at festivals.

That same year, she joined the cast of Rebel Moon: Part One – The Child of Fire under the direction of Zack Snyder.

The production of these two space installments cost $166 million.

Physical Transformation and the NBA Scandal

In 2024, she took on the challenge of playing V. Stiviano in the miniseries Clipped. The plot recreates the racism scandal that led to Donald Sterling's expulsion from the NBA. For this role, she underwent intense makeup sessions to replicate the real woman's look.

Filming for the series took place mainly in Los Angeles during 2023. Coleman worked on Stiviano's voice and gestures to move away from parody and find a more human portrayal of a figure despised by American public opinion.

The series premiered on Hulu and runs for six episodes.