--- title: 'Greta Lee Opposes AI Actors, Says Movies Need Human Connection' type: 'blog post' section: 'The Argument' format: 'Editorial feature' standfirst: 'RTÉ reported on 25 August that Greta Lee opposes AI actors because films depend on human connection. A separate Yardbarker report puts the same argument next to her defense of independent movies and the small-scale theatre experience.' author: 'Dorothy Kwan' published: '2026-08-28' updated: '2026-08-28' about_people: - 'Greta Lee' tags: - 'Greta Lee opposed to AI actors' - 'Greta Lee human connection films' - 'Greta Lee independent movies essential' - 'Late Fame Greta Lee Kent Jones' - 'RTÉ Greta Lee AI actors' sources: - 'https://www.msn.com/en-gb/entertainment/movies/actress-greta-lee-opposed-to-ai-actors-as-films-are-about-human-connection/ar-AA2aQ6xR' - 'https://www.rte.ie/entertainment/greta-lee/' - 'https://www.yardbarker.com/entertainment/articles/independent_movies_are_essential_says_greta_lee/s1_17465_44113428' canonical: 'https://cinepixo.com/blog/greta-lee-opposes-ai-actors-says-movies-need-human-connection' publisher: 'CinePixo' --- # Greta Lee Opposes AI Actors, Says Movies Need Human Connection *RTÉ reported on 25 August that Greta Lee opposes AI actors because films depend on human connection. A separate Yardbarker report puts the same argument next to her defense of independent movies and the small-scale theatre experience.* By Dorothy Kwan, 2026-08-28 · The Argument On 25 August, RTÉ reported that Greta Lee opposes AI actors because films depend on human connection. A separate 29 July Yardbarker report, carried from BANG Showbiz, had Lee calling independent movies essential and arguing for films made at the scale of *Late Fame*, her new project with critic-turned-director Kent Jones. Film readers should care because Lee is not talking in abstractions. She is pointing at the exact place where studio talk gets slippery: a movie needs a human on screen, and it needs enough room for a human audience to meet it. ## RTÉ: Greta Lee Draws a Hard Line on AI Actors RTÉ reported that Lee said she is opposed to AI actors and that films are about human connection. That is a plain line, and it cuts straight through the usual lab-coated marketing mush. The pitch for synthetic performers always tries to sound like efficiency, innovation, inevitability. Lee's answer does none of that. She makes the argument from the audience side: the point of movies is the bond between a living performer and the person watching. Strip that out and you do not get progress. You get a shell with better bookkeeping. The useful part of the report is its simplicity. Lee does not dress the subject up as a philosophy seminar. She names the job, names the thing she wants to keep, and leaves the rest where it belongs: on the people trying to sell a machine as if it were a movie star. ![Greta Lee at the San Francisco International Film Festival in 2026](https://pokemon-dive.us-lax-4.linodeobjects.com/cinepixo/posts/2026/08/420e6c69-883e-4b82-a36a-67f971fd193d.webp) *Photo: Jesse Kornblum · [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0) · [source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Greta_Lee_SFFILM_2026_02.jpg)* ## Yardbarker and BANG Showbiz: Small Movies Still Need a Champion Yardbarker, in a July 29 item that it said first appeared on BANG Showbiz, reported Lee's case for independent movies. Lee called them essential and said she was actively campaigning to keep films of that size and scope in circulation. Yardbarker also said she has appeared in big-budget work in recent years, which makes the indie defense feel less like a pose and more like a choice with some weight behind it. She told *The Hollywood Reporter* that people have already made strong arguments for the theatre-going experience, but the market still sits in a tricky spot. That is the real annoyance here. The publicity line says everybody values the communal movie house. The business end keeps acting as if the only thing that matters is scale. Lee calls that bluff without drama. She just says she would hate to see a world where movies like *Late Fame* disappear. ![Greta Lee, actress, at the 63rd annual New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center in 2025 for the film A House of Dynamite](https://pokemon-dive.us-lax-4.linodeobjects.com/cinepixo/posts/2026/08/edae8876-80f6-48c3-8150-d02256e60b48.webp) ![Greta Lee, actress, at the 63rd annual New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center in 2025 for the film A House of Dynamite](https://pokemon-dive.us-lax-4.linodeobjects.com/cinepixo/posts/2026/08/b4e82844-494c-4bf3-a624-70e7265ea9bf.webp) *Photos: Bryan Berlin · [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0) · [source 1](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Greta_Lee_A_House_of_Dynamite-27.jpg), [source 2](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Greta_Lee_A_House_of_Dynamite-28.jpg)* ## *Late Fame* Gives the Argument a Face The reporting matters because *Late Fame* gives her position a body, a room, a title. Lee said the film has the kind of size and scope she wants people to keep making and supporting. She said independent films have mattered in her own life, and she gave a specific example: seeing the *Before* trilogy in New York City by herself. That, she said, meant something to her as a person, not as an actor. That detail does the heavy lifting. It turns a policy gripe into a memory. Plenty of people talk about cinema as a social good. Lee talks about the private experience that still lands like a public event. One person, one theatre, one story, and then the odd little fact that your life has shifted by the time the lights come back up. That is not a slogan. It is the thing the slogan keeps failing to reach. ![Greta Lee and Rebecca Ferguson at the 63rd annual New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center in 2025 for the film A House of Dynamite](https://pokemon-dive.us-lax-4.linodeobjects.com/cinepixo/posts/2026/08/d65f6497-6563-450d-a313-2b12b5e39014.webp) ![Greta Lee and Rebecca Ferguson at the 63rd annual New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center in 2025 for the film A House of Dynamite](https://pokemon-dive.us-lax-4.linodeobjects.com/cinepixo/posts/2026/08/725ece54-0eeb-485f-a929-57293e832a55.webp) *Photos: Bryan Berlin · [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0) · [source 1](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Greta_Lee_Rebecca_Ferguson_A_House_of_Dynamite-57.jpg), [source 2](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Greta_Lee_Rebecca_Ferguson_A_House_of_Dynamite-58.jpg)* ## Limits, Pressure, and 'Surabaya Johnny' Lee also made the small-budget case without sugar. She said she likes the pressure and the limits that come with it. She pointed to shooting on film, where boundaries can become part of the solution, and to the way her character Gloria in *Late Fame* does not have many resources. She said she had to sing 'Surabaya Johnny' in character with no time, and that she wanted to pay homage to the workhorse discipline she remembers from her own start in New York, when she auditioned for musicals and kept a book of her best 16 bars ready. That is where the talk stops sounding like committee copy and starts sounding like somebody who knows how a role gets made. Lee is arguing for the human face, the human room, and the human strain that lets a movie feel alive. She had to sing 'Surabaya Johnny' in character, and there was no time. ## How this piece was made **Format:** Editorial feature ## In this piece - [Greta Lee](https://cinepixo.com/people/greta-lee) ## Sources - https://www.msn.com/en-gb/entertainment/movies/actress-greta-lee-opposed-to-ai-actors-as-films-are-about-human-connection/ar-AA2aQ6xR - https://www.rte.ie/entertainment/greta-lee/ - https://www.yardbarker.com/entertainment/articles/independent_movies_are_essential_says_greta_lee/s1_17465_44113428 Every factual claim above is drawn from these. The reading of them is ours. Source: https://cinepixo.com/blog/greta-lee-opposes-ai-actors-says-movies-need-human-connection Written for CinePixo. Nothing on this page is imported prose.