From Brighton Beach to Cannes: An actor’s 30-year quest for success comes with ‘Anora’

Karren Karagulian is doing pretty well for an actor who quit the industry in 2017.

Despite landing a string of supporting roles in highly acclaimed films, Karagulian was having trouble finding work a few years ago. He reached a crossroads after "The Florida Project," a critical darling from director Sean Baker that failed to give Karagulian's career the boost he had hoped for.

“I decided I don’t want to do this anymore,” Karagulian said over coffee at Parkview Diner in Coney Island on Thursday. “I just quit.”

For the next several years, the actor sold high-end home furnishings in the New York area and focused on raising his four children, happy to put the days of fruitless auditions behind him.

But his hiatus from Hollywood didn’t last long.

“Sean wouldn’t leave me alone,” Karagulian said with a laugh. In 2022, Baker sent Karagulian the script for "Anora."

"Anora" won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in May, putting him on a new trajectory. The film, set in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, follows the story of Ani (Mikey Madison) – short for Anora – a stripper who gets swept off her feet by one of her clients, Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), the happy-go-lucky son of a Russian oligarch.

They fall in love, get hitched, and live the good life in Ivan’s mansion on Sheepshead Bay – until Ivan’s parents find out. The parents task Toros, Karagulian’s character, with finding the young lovers and putting an end to their union.

The movie is brimming with locations and actors from Brighton Beach, giving the Russian-centric enclave a rare spotlight on the silver screen.

It’s a long way from where Karagulian was born, in Armenia, when it was part of the Soviet Union. He arrived in Brighton Beach in 1990, with just a few hundred dollars and some tins of caviar to sell for some extra cash.

At first, his goal was simply to get by, and take care of his cousin, who had come to America to seek treatment for gangrene. After salvaging a mattress and TV from the sidewalk, he found a room they could rent, and took odd jobs like repairing rugs to make ends meet. Karagulian had served in the army prior to coming to the United States, which he said had taught him how to survive. But, he recalled, “the first year here was harder than the army.”

Still, for a 20-year old from the Soviet Union, New York was a place of wonder. Back home, he said, “candy, chewing gum, or jeans for us was a dream.” But in the United States, “even just going to the supermarket and seeing all these things… it was a feeling of happiness.”

Beyond that, he remembers the Brighton Beach of yesteryear with its old-fashioned restaurants and theaters hosting Russian plays, music, and dance, and the Russian-language bookstore he used to frequent.

“There’s a bank there now,” Karagulian lamented.

He stumbled into acting by chance, after befriending some NYU film students, including Baker. “I never thought about acting,” he admits. But he started performing in their student films — initially as a favor, though he later realized acting could be something more for him.

“It felt special,” he said, about acting. “When you're an immigrant, especially the way I came here, it's very hard to find yourself… when I was acting, I was kind of finding a part of myself that was hidden somewhere very, very far inside me.”

And so began a decadeslong acting career, mostly notably in Baker’s renowned films such as "Prince of Broadway" (2008), "Starlet" (2012), "Tangerine" (2015), and "The Florida Project" (2017). Early on, they developed a screenplay set in Brighton Beach, but they couldn’t get the project financed.

“I kind of gave up on making a film [set in Brighton Beach],” Karagulian said.

But when he read the screenplay for "Anora," Karagulian instantly connected with the material.

“I fell in love with the story, with the characters. And the rest is history,” he said.

Though the film has received critical acclaim, its production wasn’t as smooth.

“It was a lot more chaotic than your normal film,” said the film's locations manager, Ross Brodar. “We didn’t have a lot of money… [the actors] didn’t have trailers like movie stars, they were just sucking it up.”

Karagulian also struggled with panic attacks – after dreaming of making a Brighton Beach film for decades, the stakes felt higher than they had in previous jobs. “Maybe this [movie] was a little bit closer to my heart…I wanted to deliver as high a quality product as I could.”

Despite – or perhaps because of – the challenges, this barebones, pressure-packed production yielded an authentic New York movie.

“To be able to dig into all the guts of this city and get something raw and real," said Brodar. "I feel like only New Yorkers can really appreciate that part of it.”

But New Yorkers aren’t the only ones responding positively to the film, and when "Anora" won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, earning a standing ovation that lasted for over seven minutes, Karagulian was elated.

“It proved to me that we did what we were trying to do,” he said with a degree of satisfaction. “All this time and energy that went behind making a Brighton Beach project worked.”

The film is now in theaters and has Oscar buzz, and Karagulian is being recognized more often — which he said can be awkward when it happens on a crowded subway car at rush hour, for instance. “But of course, attention and love, who doesn’t like that?” he said with a shrug.

Perhaps ironically, none of the waitstaff I spoke to at the diner had heard of him, but they all planned to see the movie and were excited to see their diner on the big screen.

“It’s in theaters? Here in New York?” said Ali El Haddad, who has managed the diner for over a decade and remembers when "Anora" shot at the diner last year. “They should at least give us free tickets,” he joked.

Despite all the success of the past six months, Karagulian still maintains a down to earth way about him.

He thanked someone who had complimented his glossy puffer coat.

“It’s my daughter’s jacket,” he said, as if to explain why he was wearing something fashionable.

The hype is also benefiting Karagulian's acting career. He’s now being offered parts without having to audition — a rarity before "Anora."

“Now I can afford to say ‘no' to things. I prefer to do things that touch my heart,” he said.