Perky actress and producer Ellie Cornell was born in Glen Cove, Long Island, New York, USA on December 15, 1963. After graduating from Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida in 1986, Cornell had a small guest appearance in a 1988 episode of Génération pub (1987). The same year, she played an assertive reporter in the Oscar-nominated comedy movie Veuve, mais pas trop... (1988).
Cornell's best-known role also came about in 1988 when she auditioned for parts in two horror films: lead girl Alice Johnson in Le cauchemar de Freddy (1988) and Rachel Carruthers, foster sister of Jamie Lloyd, in Halloween 4 (1988), winning the latter. Halloween 4 grossed over three times its budget and Cornell reprised her role as Rachel in its sequel, Halloween 5 (1989). After appearing in episodes of TV shows ABC Afterschool Specials (1972) and Gabriel Bird (1990), as well as the made-for-television movie Chips, Chien de Combat (1990), Cornell was set to appear in the comedy Une équipe hors du commun (1992), but had to drop out after finding out she was pregnant.
After an eight-year break from the film industry, Cornell returned to executive produce and act in Free Enterprise (1998) and The Specials (2000). She played tough cop Jordan Casper in the critically-panned, video game-based zombie movie House of the Dead (2003) and its sequel, House of the Dead 2 (2005), and appeared in five more horror films in 2005 and 2006. Moreover, Cornell was in the pilot episode of The Event (2010) and played a detective in four episodes of the short-lived Femme Fatales (2011); she also tried a hand at directing Prank (2008) with Halloween 4 and 5 co-star Danielle Harris and horror actress Heather Langenkamp, which fell through, and was interviewed in the documentary Halloween: 25 Years of Terror (2006).
Cornell has been married to producer Mark Gottwald since 1990. They have two daughters, Grace and Rose. She and her husband also founded production company Mindfire Entertainment and own Ship's Inn, a restaurant in Massachusetts, together.
