- Born
- Birth nameNicole Delarce Russin-McFarland
- Height5′ 7″ (1.70 m)
- Nicole Russin-McFarland is a visionary composer, director, screenwriter, and actress redefining the landscape of modern independent cinema and film music. Known for her emotionally driven orchestral scores and imaginative, self-created film worlds, she blends the storytelling traditions of Romantic-era composition with the energy of contemporary pop culture-creating a signature style all her own.
As a multi-hyphenate force, Russin-McFarland has composed music streamed millions of times across platforms from Spotify to user uploaded videos on TikTok and Meta, directed award-winning animated features, and written screenplays that fuse fantasy, introspection, and visual wonder. Her work often explores themes of resilience, girlhood, and the healing power of imagination-inviting audiences into whimsical worlds with emotional depth.
Describing herself as "a Midwestern girl in Wonderland," Nicole was raised between downstate Illinois, downtown Chicago on weekends, and her great aunt and uncle's home in Urbana, one of her "portals to Wonderland." From an early age, she was composing music and sketching film plots in her school notebooks, often dreaming up imaginary remakes of classics like The Time Machine and scoring them in her head. Inspired by James Horner, Hans Zimmer, James Cameron, and Peter Jackson, she began developing her artistic voice as a teenager-deeply in love with both cinema and sound.
At just 16, she earned both her high school diploma and an associate's degree through online community college courses, later graduating from the University of Texas at Austin at 19. After moving to New York City, she modeled for brands including Redken, Laura Mercier, and Pepsi, while contributing freelance writing to GQ, Men's Health, and The New York Daily News, where she became the youngest freelancer in the paper's history at 21.
Despite facing serious and unpredictable diabetic complications throughout her twenties-including episodes of temporary blindness-Russin-McFarland continued to pursue her dream of making films and composing music. She taught herself animation and special effects through online study, eventually releasing her first animated short Pizza Delivery in 2018. Her later works include the critically praised Miss Shaguna's Chickens and the Wonderland-inspired The Homework's Revenge: Esther in Wonderland, both of which premiered digitally and found a devoted online following.
In 2021, she signed a distribution agreement with AWAL for her film score, classical crossover, and contemporary music releases. She has composed original work for film and television production music libraries, trailer placements, and streaming content, with a musical voice described as "cinematic storytelling through sound"-weaving sweeping orchestration, hybrid textures, and emotional leitmotifs into each project.
She is currently in development on her first major-budget live-action feature films while simultaneously composing and acting in projects from other creatives.
Russin-McFarland's goal is to use her artistic career not only to entertain, but to spark change-funding global charitable initiatives in mental health, arts access, environmental causes, equality, and girls' empowerment.
Since July 2026, all of her CinematNIC Music and Lucky Pineapple Films releases are distributed through a partnership with the UK based company RouteNote, marking the beginning of a new chapter focused on expanding a rapidly growing music catalog.
- 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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