About Elias

Stage-trained screen actor — twenty years of learning how to listen on camera.

Twenty years of
learning how to
listen on camera

Elias Vance photographed in a studio between takes
Portrait — Chicago, 2026
  • 22Screen credits
  • 31Stage roles
  • 9Rep seasons

I was cast in my first role because I was the only reader in the room who stopped talking long enough to hear the other actor finish. That is still the whole job. Everything else — the dialect, the stillness, the eight weeks of table work — exists to protect the moment when a scene partner says something and it genuinely lands.

Trained at the Elmsworth Conservatory in classical text and Meisner repetition, I spent nine seasons in regional repertory before the camera work found me. Theatre taught me structure: how a scene breathes across two hours, how to keep a performance alive on the forty-first night. Film taught me economy — that a held breath in a close-up can carry what a soliloquy carries from a thrust stage.

I work best on projects where the writing is doing something difficult. Quiet fathers, unreliable witnesses, men who are wrong but not villains. If your script has a character who says one thing while meaning four, I would like to read for it.

  • UnionSAG-AFTRA · Equity
  • BasedChicago, with London right to work
  • Height / Playing age6′0″ · 34–46
  • DialectsRP, Estuary, Chicago, Deep South, Dublin
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“Vance does almost nothing for ninety minutes and breaks your heart twice.”

The Harbour Review — on Salt in the Wound
Night shoot on the set of Salt in the Wound, first unit rolling
Second unit, Salt in the Wound — Galway, 2025
Curtain call of a stage production under warm footlights
Closing night, The Quiet Inheritance — Elmsworth Playhouse

What I bring into the room

Six disciplines, all of them still in active practice rather than listed from memory.

  • Screen acting

    Comfortable on long lenses and long takes. Marks hit without the performance knowing it.

  • Classical text

    Verse, heightened language and Restoration comedy — scansion that serves sense, not metre.

  • Voice & audiobook

    Home booth to broadcast spec, same-day turnaround, 40+ hours of long-form narration.

  • Motion capture

    Volume-trained, HMC-comfortable, used to building a character with no set and no costume.

  • Dialect work

    Five accents at audition standard, plus a coach on call for anything outside the list.

  • Movement & combat

    BASSC-certified unarmed and single sword. Rides, swims, and takes direction on both.

Training

Elmsworth Conservatory
Three-year acting diploma — classical text, Meisner, Laban
Rowan Court Studio
Two-season company member, Chekhov and Ibsen intensives
Ongoing
Weekly scene study with Ana Ferreira; dialect coaching with J. Okonkwo

Representation

Theatrical & film
Halloran & Finch Talent — Chicago
Voice
Signal Voices — London
Press enquiries
Direct to the contact form below

“Send the whole script, not just the sides. I read better when I know how it ends.”

— Elias

Awards &
festival
recognition

  1. 2026 Best Lead Performance — Salt in the Wound Northwood International Film Festival Winner
  2. 2025 Outstanding Actor in a Play — The Quiet Inheritance Midwest Stage Awards Winner
  3. 2025 Best Actor — The Longer Winter Cordova Film Week Nominated
  4. 2024 Ensemble Prize — Glasshouse Tidewater Independent Awards Winner
  5. 2022 Breakthrough Performance — Mercy Street Bridge Lightbox New Voices Nominated

What the critics filed

Selected notices from stage and screen releases, 2022 onward.