Greenville-born actress nominated at Cannes

Feb. 25—Filmmaker, actress and former Greenville resident Rachel Rice recently received the exciting news that this year's Cannes Film Festival has nominated her for a "best actress in a short film" award.

The honor was in recognition of her leading role in "Love Story" — a seven-minute long independent "dark romantic comedy" that was shot in Greenville and premiered at the Texan Theater in July.

"My mom (Holly Rice), who produced the film has been putting it in festivals all around, so this came as a great surprise," Rice said.

So far, "Love Story" has also earned an honorable mention from the Night of Comedy Shorts and an award for "Best Physical Reaction" from the Absurd Film Festival.

The film was a group effort that included the talents of no less than four people with ties to Greenville: Michael Lester as its writer and director, Austin Thomas as its special effects artist, Holly Rice as its producer, and Rachel as both its lead actress and editor.

"Unfortunately the film isn't viewable online right now as it's making its way through the festival circuit, but it's been described as a 'dark romantic comedy' because a lot of the darkness comes from my character Hanna's psychological state and how she sees things as they exist in her own head versus what they are in reality," Rice said.

"It gets violent at the end, and someone dies, but it starts out like a classic, lighthearted romantic comedy," she explained.

In addition to acting, Rice directs and edits her own films and is also a musician, an artist and an animator. The genesis of "Love Story" happened when Rice's mother met Lester at a Hump Day Happy Hour local fine arts showcase at the Texan Theater last year.

"When they met, she mentioned my work to him, and after he saw some of it, he wrote the script around what he had seen from me," Rice explained.

Currently, Rice is in the process of shooting another short film with long-time collaborator Dusty Williams, with whom she used to write and perform music with their band Darks & Charlies.

"The film we're working on now is based on a world we created and stories we wrote for the songs," Rice said. "Darks and Charlies are the names of the two main characters, and it's in sort of a neo noir kind of setting."

Including "Love Story," Rice's IMDB page lists eight acting credits in film and television. Long before that and before moving to Denton, where she resides now, Rice was active in performing arts in Greenville at both Phoenix Charter School, and later in Greenville ISD.

"As far as doing what I do, I owe a lot of it to my artistic mom, who painted, played the piano, and eventually got into videography — but I also owe a lot to (the late Ronda) Burns, who taught music and theatre at Phoenix," Rice said. "I wrote a play in the first or second grade. Mrs. Burns liked it and she had some of the older kids perform it. That was really cool, and she was also the first to teach me piano.

"Later, I did theatre in GISD, and Mr. (Jody) Flippen at the high school was really supportive and encouraging. He even came to watch some of the plays I was in as a freshman at UNT," Rice added.

Although she chose to cut her college career short to have more time to delve deeper into filmmaking, Rice has been supplementing her "learn by doing" approach to filmmaking by attending workshops and joined the Linda McAlister Talent Agency.

"I think I became interested in all the different aspects of filmmaking both because I'm a creative person and because it's a good thing — even if you're just an actor and all you have to do is show up to set — to understand how all the moving parts work together," Rice said. "It's especially good to be able to do multiple things when you're working on smaller projects."

A sampling of Rice's work can be seen on her YouTube channel at https://bit.ly/3klPfeL. This year's Cannes Film Festival will run from March 16 through May 27, and the awards for short films will be announced at some point between those two dates.