Sophia Eleni on Bone Keeper, Assassin’s Creed Mirage, and Playing Women with Emotional Truth

Photography by Jemima Marriott 

Hair & Make Up by Sarah Whiteside

Across film, television, and gaming, Sophia Eleni has built a career rooted in emotional precision. From survival horror in Bone Keeper to immersive performance work in Assassin’s Creed Mirage and Cairn, the British-Cypriot actress is drawn to characters who feel human first, even when the worlds around them are heightened, fantastical, or surreal. In conversation with LO’AMMI, Eleni reflects on endurance, identity, genre, and the industry’s growing appetite for women written with contradiction, complexity, and truth.

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Your recent work moves fluidly between horror, fantasy, historical drama, television, and even major AAA video games. What draws you toward projects, and what’s the common thread that connects the characters you choose to play?

I’m always drawn to characters who feel like real people first, even when the worlds around them are heightened or surreal. I love stories that explore survival, identity, fear, resilience… all the messy human stuff underneath. I’m less interested in perfection or heroism, and more interested in emotional truth. 

In Bone Keeper, you lead a survival thriller opposite John Rhys-Davies. Horror often pushes actors into emotionally and physically intense territory, what did this role demand from you that previous projects hadn’t?

Bone Keeper really demanded a lot of endurance I would say - emotionally, physically, and mentally. A lot of the film lives in sustained fear and survival mode, so there wasn’t really the luxury of “resetting” between scenes. The intensity had to stay simmering underneath almost everything. 

The days were long, and we were filming in really challenging environments down in dark, claustrophobic caves for weeks! Glamorous stuff! But it actually fed into the performance because by the end, you genuinely feel as worn down as the characters do.

You’ve worked across both live-action and gaming worlds, including Assassin's Creed Mirage and critically acclaimed game Cairn. How does performance work for games differ from film or television for you, especially when so much emotion has to translate through voice, motion, or immersive world-building?

For me, the emotional work is the same, but the instrument changes. In film and television, the camera can catch something very internal — a tiny thought, a shift in the eyes, a breath. In games, especially through voice and performance capture, you have to make sure that inner life still reaches the player through sound, movement, effort and atmosphere.

That’s what I loved about working on Cairn, for example. Aava’s journey is so physical, but also so psychological. The player is with her moment by moment, so every breath, every struggle, every bit of fear or determination has to feel truthful. You’re not just performing a scene; you’re helping create an experience someone can step into.

So the difference is technical, but the heart of it is the same: you’re still trying to make a human being feel real.

As a British-Cypriot actress, do you feel your cultural background has shaped the kinds of stories or perspectives you’re drawn to? And are there narratives you still hope to tell that feel personally connected to that identity?

I think it’s shaped my perspective more than anything. Being British-Cypriot meant growing up with a sense of dual identity — you belong to more than one world, and you’re often aware of the spaces between them. That naturally affects the kinds of characters I’m drawn to I think: people with inner conflict, resilience, humour, pride, vulnerability — people who are carrying a lot underneath the surface. 

I mean, I've never wanted my identity to limit me, but it absolutely gives me texture. And I’d love to see more British-Cypriot and Greek-Cypriot women on screen who aren’t just stereotypes or side characters — women who are modern, messy, sensual, ambitious, angry, hilarious, loving, complicated. Basically, women who feel like real people, not someone’s idea of “ethnic flavour”.

Your filmography includes everything from period dramas like Call the Midwife to fantasy worlds like Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. Is there a genre that still intimidates or excites you because you haven’t fully explored it yet?

I’d love to try something with a comic edge. I have quite a dry sense of humour in real life, and I think people often associate me with a kind of intensity because of the roles I have played, but I’d love to bring more of that strange, offbeat humour into my work too! Something sharp, unsettling, funny and a bit unhinged — the dream, really. I’m excited by anything that demands emotional precision and a bit of nerve.

Across many of your recent roles, there’s a sense of emotional intensity and resilience in the women you portray. As audiences continue gravitating toward more layered female protagonists, what kinds of stories do you think the industry is finally becoming ready to tell?

Well, for a long time female characters were clearly boxed into categories — if you look at old Hollywood, you had the femme fatale, the damsel, the ‘damaged’ one… and real women are so much more uncontained than that, thankfully.

Whenever a new script or role falls into my lap, I always like to get creative and ask, ‘What’s the opposite of this?’ Where’s the contradiction?

What feels exciting now is that we’re seeing more interesting writing of women, not just more ‘female roles’. More women writers and creators are shaping those narratives, so there’s more space for the mundane, the contradictory, the private moments… women as they actually are, not just what they’re supposed to represent. And that makes it a really exciting time to be an actress.