Barbie Ferreira Is Chasing Her Indie Dreams

Reported by Harper's Bazaar.

Barbie Ferreira has spent the last few years systematically dismantling her own celebrity. After Euphoria made her a household name, the 29-year-old actress pivoted hard toward smaller, director-driven projects—the kind that demand real risk and offer minimal financial guarantee. It's a move that reads as either deeply committed or completely insane, depending on your relationship to stability. For Ferreira, it feels inevitable.

She grew up in a Brazilian immigrant household in Queens, absorbing indie culture through the internet and indie sleaze aesthetics that defined the early 2010s. As a Tumblr It-girl whose Photo Booth selfies secured her first modeling gigs, Ferreira lived inside the fantasy she now recreates on screen. In Chandler Levack's Mile End Kicks—a coming-of-age film set in 2011 Montreal—she plays Grace, a music critic grappling with self-discovery, failed romance, and the grinding misogyny of a boy's club music industry. "It feels like a fantasy of what I wish my life was in 2011," Ferreira says. The role is a full-circle moment, a chance to embody the era that shaped her.

Betting on Indie Cinema

Ferreira's recent slate includes Daniel Goldhaber's remake of Faces of Death, in which she plays Margot, a content moderator flagging violent videos—a premise retrofitted for our algorithmic nightmare. She also appeared in Tracie Laymon's Bob Trevino Likes It and House of Spoils. These films share DNA: small budgets, enormous creative ambition, directors betting everything on a vision. Levack, according to Harper's Bazaar, made her debut feature for $130,000 before spending a decade developing Mile End Kicks. That kind of perseverance resonates with Ferreira. "It can happen if you really try," she says. "They're going to be on a lower budget, they're going to take some time, and they're going to be really hard as fuck to shoot. But it's going to be worth it."

What drives this choice is pure cinephilia. Ferreira considers movie-watching her film school, cycling through everything from Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist to David Cronenberg's Videodrome. She's a regular at Los Angeles indie theaters, hunting for "what's going to be outside the box and what's going to really stand the test of time." She's explicit about what she's no longer chasing: image, prestige, the next big thing. Instead, she's looking for work that makes her a better actor and filmmaker—projects that teach rather than merely showcase. "I want my career to be in filmmaking for the rest of my life," she says. "It's my passion." That's not a career move. That's a declaration.

Read the original at Harper's Bazaar.