- Born
- Birth nameNicole Delarce Russin-McFarland
- Height5′ 7″ (1.70 m)
- Nicole Russin-McFarland is a talented multi-hyphenate whose skills span across several creative fields. As a film score composer who is also a film director, screenwriter, and actress, she has broken the barriers of female stereotypes in the entertainment world. Her music has gained millions of digital streams, inspired by the 19th century romantic era and her lifelong love of mainstream artists.
A self described "Midwestern gal in Wonderland" spending her days swapping between school and her parent's home in downstate Illinois, weekends in downtown Chicago, and time at her aunt and uncle's home in Urbana, from a young age, Russin-McFarland showed an interest in music and film. She studied flute and composed her own works, pretending to score the movies she was directing. As a junior high school student, she often wrote film plot outlines and film score themes during class for the movies she dreamed of making. Her love for film music drew her to composers like James Horner and Hans Zimmer, while her favorite film directors were James Cameron and Peter Jackson. After watching The Fellowship of the Ring, the first installment of The Lord of the Rings franchise, she started writing her own remake of The Time Machine with the dream that someday her 14 year old self's ideas would become a real movie.
Russin-McFarland's passion for the entertainment industry was cemented when she started visiting New York frequently as a teenager, including attending the MTV VMAs when she was 15. She soon quit regular high school for online community college courses, earning her high school diploma and associate's degree at the same time at the age of 16. She went on to graduate from the University of Texas at 19 and moved to New York to pursue modeling and freelance writing. As an agency model, she modeled for the beauty sector of the fashion industry for brands like Redken, Laura Mercier, hairstyle magazines, and Pepsi. She was a part time freelance writer for the American and international web and print editions of GQ, Men's Health, MadeMan, and others under her real name and noms de plum. At 21, she was The New York Daily News' youngest freelancer.
During much of her 20s, Russin-McFarland faced frequent and unpredictable diabetic complications, which delayed her plans for a career in film and music, including constant nausea and sporadic bouts of temporary blindness. Despite her health problems, she continued to pursue her goals and released her first self-animated short film, "Pizza Delivery," on Amazon Prime and YouTube in July 2018. After that, she released several more short films on the two platforms, culminating in her first two animated feature films, "The Homework's Revenge: Esther in Wonderland" and the award winning "Miss Shaguna's Chickens," which were released at the end of 2021. Russin-McFarland continued with more no-budget animated and live action films as she studied special effects and art distance courses with Stan Winston School.
In July 2021, AWAL signed Russin-McFarland into a music distribution agreement for her film score, classical crossover, and contemporary music releases. She has additionally scored work for film and television production music libraries and trailer music.
Russin-McFarland is working on the early stages of her first major budget films.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Ring Group London
- Gender / Gender identityFemale
- Pronounsshe/her
- Graduated from the University of Texas at Austin at age 19 in government pre-law with minors in history, Spanish, and journalism and high school at 16.
- Admitted on social media in a series of Tweets to showing up and attending the MTV VMAs as a 15 year old in 2002 and 22 year old in 2009: "It involves a bitchy attitude and super hot fancy outfit." Tweeted afterwards, "I've only shown up uninvited to awards shows & concerts.".
- Was at one time The New York Daily News' youngest freelance writer at 21 years old.
- She was born without a palmaris longus tendon in each wrist.
- She used fake pen names, sometimes combined with plays on her real first or last name, for the first years she began working as a freelance journalist to distance herself from any journalism work outside of the entertainment industry. She began using her legal name as a journalist when she started covering Hollywood journalism in the mid 2010's.
- I started working when I was 13. Unlike most people you hear about, I didn't have magic fairy dust thrown at me. I had lots of circumstances that should have made me "make it" as opposed to halfway "making it." I've had everything go right the way it's supposed to and not see the same results as those famous stories we hear about in Hollywood, entertainment, media, and art in general. I realized if I had to do something big, I had to go out on my own, and that is what I'm doing now so that my music and filmmaking will finally be recognized. My motto is, "If you don't believe in yourself, no one will."
- Everyone in this movie (The Eyes of Old Texas), from small cameos to big roles, may be famous, but none with the exception of one person are professional actors, yet we all wanted to make a movie with every inch of our hearts. The feeling is mutual, and one of, We're going to make a movie as if we are the first people ever making a movie.
- I was always wishing, "OK, will this job lead me to being a film director and film score composer? Will it help me meet people?" And oddly, I was right. I met my film (The Eyes of Old Texas)'s business partner when I interviewed him on my ELLE Spain blog.
- If John Williams composed it, I had to play it. I to this day thank my teachers and tutors for being so good. I was given old time classical music to rehearse but so much film related music, of course it stuck! What else would happen? The big question was as a kid, how am I going to do this as an adult? Because adults would tell me, you can't do movies and music both. The same question hit me when I was 20 and had just had a filmmaker steal the theme he asked me to make him only to hire a known composer to do my own theme in his movie! Where do I go from here? The answer was immediately telling myself, "You have to brand yourself. Make yourself known somehow so nobody will ever steal your work again."
- I taught myself how to compose when I was about 11. I went to some bookstore on a trip to St. Louis and got sheet music. I made myself do it again and again until I learned it.
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