Ella Beatty beats me to the Carlyle. I’m not late, by the way in which: I arrive at 2:58 p.m. for our 3 p.m. espresso, figuring that it could be me ready for her. (Actors, in my expertise, are at all times working behind, armed with the data that issues don’t begin taking place till they get there anyway.) “Oh, God—I hope you haven’t been ready lengthy,” I inform her, fumbling with my scarf. Ella guarantees that she simply acquired right here too. However her neatly folded coat, draped over the criminal of her arm, suggests in any other case.

Twenty minutes later, over tea within the lodge’s Renzo Mongiardino–designed gallery, I study she’s following certainly one of her father Warren Beatty’s cardinal guidelines: “At all times be on time.” (Or, in her case, early.) Right here’s one other, from her mom, Annette Bening: “Be sort—as a result of there’ll at all times be somebody extra lovely, extra charming, extra attention-grabbing. If you happen to present up and be sort, it goes a great distance.” A 3rd, which Warren picked up after working with Gene Hackman: “The actor that you’re working with is an important individual within the room to you—hearken to what they offer you.”

We’re right here as a result of, after rising up surrounded by actors, Ella’s grow to be one herself. This January, the 23-year-old made her skilled performing debut in Ryan Murphy’s Feud: Capote vs. The Swans as Truman Capote’s surrogate daughter, Kerry O’Shea. And subsequent, on March 25, she is going to change Elle Fanning as River in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins ’s acclaimed Acceptable on Broadway, costarring Sarah Paulson and Corey Stoll. It is a huge function to step into. The play has garnered rave opinions, with the Guardian acclaiming it as “a nimble, deft and extremely entertaining work…that twists the nostalgia of homecoming.”

Exceptionally poised, she addresses the nepo-baby discourse outright, with out me even asking: “I completely acknowledge that there’s an inherent privilege and publicity that comes from having well-known actors as mother and father,” Ella says. “And I actually hope that I can supply one thing significant.”

Ella spent her childhood observing her mother and father: A few of her earliest reminiscences contain sitting on her mom’s lap in a make-up trailer, and as a teen she visited her dad on set whereas he directed Guidelines Don’t Apply (2016). But her first actual expertise with performing got here in 2018, when she began at Juilliard—the celebrated performing-arts faculty with a 7% acceptance fee. Together with the 17 different college students in her class, she studied drama below legendary instructors like Moni Yakim. (“He calls for 100% of you,” Jessica Chastain as soon as informed The New York Instances of Yakim. “He’s not likely a hand-holder. He’s not a coddler.”) This system gave Ella a cerebral view of her craft: She regards performing as an artwork kind and harbors blended emotions about having a public Instagram account. “What I grew up studying was that you simply’re alleged to be a vessel for a personality,” she says. “It’s higher if folks know much less about who you’re.”