Where You Know 'Soulm8te' Star Lily Sullivan From

Most audiences don’t tend to expect much from debuts. Plenty of big names have had first roles that weren’t anything to write home about, but Lily Sullivan’s first role, which was in a small Australian comedy called Mental, was acclaimed for its performances, hers included.

The cast includes big names like Toni Collette and Liev Schreiber. While it may not have earned a lot of attention in the States, it was nominated for multiple acting awards at the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Awards. The film is an erratic black comedy that bounces between tones like nobody’s business. Sometimes it can be a bit much, like a scene where all of the women decide to menstruate in unison, but for a debut, Lily Sullivan does an admirable job.

She was nominated for the Best Young Actor Award at the age of 18, mostly because she was able to find a way to balance the film’s eccentric comedic tones with dramatic moments that felt emotional and real. For an acting debut, it’s hard to beat.

For a decade, Lily Sullivan starred in a bunch of smaller roles that were good but weren’t critical darlings. It wasn’t until Monolith was released that Sullivan truly came into her own as an actress, and critical acclaim followed. 

What makes Monolith such a compelling showcase for Sullivan is that it’s effectively a one-woman show. People contact Sullivan’s unnamed interviewer over the phone, but for the film’s 93-minute runtime, it’s basically her movie. Mysteries crop up, some being minor, like what exactly the interviewer did to lose her job, while others have much larger implications, like the nature of mysterious black bricks that people are reporting to her.

While it’s marketed as a sci-fi thriller, there are definitely tinges of horror to it, and its podcasting approach makes it similar in execution to Undertone (2026). Sullivan does a good job as the interviewer. She’s not a good person, and her degraded state of mind helps lead to an anxiety-ridden and memorable finale. It’s Sullivan’s best role, and Australians can see it for free on JustWatch TV (or on streaming platforms like Apple TV if you’re not there).

Mental and Monolith may have shown Lily Sullivan’s acting chops, but Evil Dead Rise proved that she wasn’t just a niche Australian actress. She could star in one of the most prolific horror franchises and be a badass at the same time.

Evil Dead Rise sees Sullivan play Beth, a pregnant woman visiting her estranged sister. However, when her nephew plays an audio recording of the Necronomicon, Deadites invade the bodies of her extended family to cause misery and suffering to everyone involved. This was the film that helped introduce Sullivan to the West, wielding whatever weapons she could to bludgeon and dismember her former family.

There are gallons of blood and viscera aplenty, and Sullivan relishes being able to spit out one-liners at Deadites. The final scene, where she fights an abomination of a Deadite, is worth the price of admission alone, and she comes across like a true badass in the same mold as Ripley from Aliens (1986). Together with Lee Cronin, the two made Evil Dead Rise the most profitable entry in the series. If you love some messed-up horror with plenty of gore, it more than delivers.

Evil Dead Rise wouldn’t be the only time Cronin and Sullivan worked together, though it’s understandable if you didn’t know that. After all, most people rightly assumed that she wouldn’t be in Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, but he made sure to sneak her in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo.

Now you may shrug your shoulders and wonder why that would be important. A ton of actors have small cameos, but they rarely define their careers. Well, Sullivan plays a teacher who was affected by the mummy’s curse, and she looks positively revolting, almost like a monster from The Exorcist (1973).

There’s a certain amount of physicality to playing a monster (just ask Doug Jones), but Sullivan pulls it off, and the practical effects only sell it further. Plus, she even did some improvisation during the role, oozing snot that took even Cronin by surprise. That’s the mark of a truly great actress when you can even make a horror director gag a little. She’s only in the film for a brief moment out of its 132-minute runtime, but it’s a great cameo that shows Sullivan can be a disgusting monster when needed.

And then there’s Soulm8te. With several back-to-back horror films under her belt, it only makes sense that Sullivan would transition from being a hero to a one-off monster, and now the main villain of a horror movie. That’s versatility.

The connections between M3GAN and Soulm8te are obvious, and the concepts are very similar. We have a lonely person who is seeking companionship after a horrible accident killed their loved ones, and they do so in the form of an autonomous robot. There’s an understandable tragedy to the film, and Lily Sullivan will star as the eponymous Soulm8ate, Sara, and nothing bad will happen when her owner decides to alter her program to become more independent.

Just from the trailer, it’s definitely giving off Obsession vibes by way of Her (2013), with Sullivan showing off the physicality that made her cameo in The Mummy so memorable. Expect some messed-up kills and some disturbing line deliveries from her, and don’t be surprised when people call Sullivan the best thing about Soulm8te. This won’t be the last time we hear from her.