Connor Storrie Movies and TV Shows: roles before ‘Heated Rivalry’

Connor Storrie movies and TV shows that predate his breakout role as Ilya Rozanov in the 2025 Crave/HBO Max hit Heated Rivalry offer a compact map of how a server turned actor landed a cultural moment. The same year he was nearly fired from his restaurant job, the Odessa-born performer already had a feature debut, a Hulu guest spot, and a cameo in a major studio sequel. Those credits now circulate in fan edits and casting roundups as the pieces that quietly built his résumé before overnight fame arrived.

Early short films and improv roots

Storrie’s first screen credits arrived in 2018 through a string of shorts shot between shifts in Los Angeles. Passenger in Ridester Professionals and the title role in Ménage à Trois gave him on-camera experience while he trained at The Groundlings and studied clowning techniques that later informed his physical work on Heated Rivalry.

Two additional shorts in 2019 and 2020, Watch and Guide and White Terror, kept him in front of cameras even as auditions remained scarce. These early jobs rarely surface in mainstream coverage yet they supplied the reel that agents eventually used to pitch him for larger projects.

The grind included steady restaurant work that continued until casting directors called for Heated Rivalry. Storrie has described the overlap in interviews, noting the surreal shift from clearing tables one week to principal photography the next.

Feature debut in Riley

His first credited feature role came in the 2023 independent drama Riley, where he played Liam Hauser in a coming-of-age story that screened on the festival circuit. The part marked the transition from short-form work to sustained character arcs and remains the credit most frequently cited by completists tracking his trajectory.

Production overlapped with his first television booking, creating a 2023 double-header that quietly signaled momentum. Though Riley received limited distribution, the film gave Storrie a lead credit on IMDb and a tape that helped secure subsequent auditions.

Indie-film viewers who caught the movie at festivals now point to it as the moment his screen presence sharpened, particularly in scenes that required the physical vocabulary he had honed through clown training.

Guest spot on Tiny Beautiful Things

That same year Storrie appeared as Apartment Guy in the pilot episode of Hulu’s limited series Tiny Beautiful Things, adapted from Cheryl Strayed’s columns. The one-scene role placed him inside a Hello Sunshine production and gave streaming subscribers an early look at his work.

Because the series drew from widely read source material, the episode still circulates among fans revisiting early episodes. Storrie’s brief exchange sits among the show’s ensemble of Los Angeles neighbors and remains accessible without a deep dive into festival archives.

The Hulu credit also surfaced in recent social-media roundups after Heated Rivalry premiered, with viewers clipping the scene and tagging it as proof he had already been working inside recognizable prestige television.

Cameo in Joker Folie à Deux

Storrie’s highest-profile pre-breakout appearance arrived in 2024 with Todd Phillips’s musical sequel Joker: Folie à Deux. Cast as an unnamed young inmate at Arkham Asylum, his character delivers a fatal blow to Arthur Fleck in a sequence that drew immediate online attention once his name surfaced.

The role positioned him inside a Warner Bros. release starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, even if the film’s mixed reception kept many viewers from registering the supporting players. Storrie later referenced the experience in Variety, noting he had already been “a part of the Joker” before Heated Rivalry entered the conversation.

Casting directors and fans alike now treat the cameo as the clearest bridge between his indie work and the major-studio visibility that followed. The scene continues to circulate in edit compilations pairing his earlier intensity with the romantic lead audiences met in 2025.

Training that shaped later roles

Storrie’s clowning studies, begun during his Groundlings years, directly informed the physical demands of both his Arkham inmate and the hockey romance lead. Instructors emphasized precise physical storytelling, a skill set he applied to scenes that required minimal dialogue yet clear emotional beats.

The same training helped during Heated Rivalry auditions when producers asked for movement-based chemistry reads. Clown work also gave him tools for handling the tonal shifts between the series’ lighter banter and its more charged confrontations.

Recent interviews have highlighted how that background distinguished him from other candidates who arrived with traditional dramatic training alone, turning an unusual résumé item into a practical advantage once the project scaled.

Waiting tables until the call

Storrie remained a full-time server at a Los Angeles restaurant through most of 2024, a detail that resurfaced in Hollywood Reporter coverage after Heated Rivalry’s premiere. He has recounted receiving the final callback while still on shift and nearly losing the job the week before production began.

The anecdote has fueled social-media threads contrasting overnight success narratives with the longer timeline of small credits and day jobs. Fans now circulate screenshots of his earlier IMDb listings alongside the viral clip of him accepting the Heated Rivalry role.

Industry observers note that many actors in similar supporting parts on major studio films still juggle service work, underscoring how rare the leap from those conditions to series lead actually remains.

Post-breakout contrast

After Heated Rivalry’s December 2025 debut, Storrie hosted Saturday Night Live and fielded offers for new projects, including rumored Olympic-related appearances in 2026. Those opportunities now sit alongside the earlier credits in updated filmographies that fans assemble to trace the speed of his rise.

Search interest in Connor Storrie movies and TV shows spiked once clips from Riley and the Joker cameo began resurfacing on TikTok and X. Viewers who discovered him through the hockey series quickly sought out the prior work, creating fresh streams for the 2023 indie and limited-series appearances.

The contrast between the modest scale of those projects and the current awards conversation around Heated Rivalry has become a recurring angle in profiles that position him as an example of late-breaking visibility rather than gradual ascent.

Where the credits live now

Riley remains available through festival archives and occasional streaming windows, while Tiny Beautiful Things streams on Hulu. Joker: Folie à Deux sits on Max and other platforms that carry the DC catalog, making the three main pre-2025 roles reachable without specialty access.

Short-film credits from 2018 to 2020 occasionally surface at student showcases or online festivals, though they require more targeted searching. Fans compiling complete Connor Storrie movies and TV shows lists often start with the 2023 feature and television work before moving backward.

Updated Wikipedia and IMDb pages now foreground the earlier credits beneath the Heated Rivalry banner, reflecting how quickly the narrative shifted from unknown server to recognizable lead once the series took hold.

Looking ahead

The pre-Heated Rivalry roles continue to serve as reference points for casting directors evaluating Storrie’s range beyond the romantic lead that defined his breakthrough. As new projects develop, those earlier performances supply concrete examples of his work across independent drama, limited series, and blockbuster sequels.