A director, producer, casting director, coach and teacher, Ellen Novack has been in the entertainment business for over 25 years. She began her career as an actress and then moved into casting, working for five years with Joseph Papp at the New York Shakespeare Festival, where she cast over 25 major projects including two on Broadway, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, starring Betty Buckley and Plenty, starring Kate Nelligan and Edward Herrman. She has been Casting Director for the daytime drama Another World and, more recently, One Life to Live for which she won two Artios Awards for Best Soap Casting. She cast the show for four years and then produced it for three.

Between her soap opera assignments, Ellen ran her own casting office, where she cast TV pilots, independent films, and worked for most of the larger regional theatres in the country, including American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, Goodman Theatre in Chicago, Hartford Stage Company, The Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, and Center Stage in Baltimore.

Ellen was also the Managing Director of the Classic Stage Company in New York City, for which she also cast, earning three Artios nominations for Best Theatre Casting.

She continues to cast, produces films independently, is writing a book about the process and history of casting, and teaches at The Juilliard School and American Conservatory Theatre. She coaches privately, and her class in On-Camera Auditioning is very popular in New York and Los Angeles. Her first film, Psychoanalysis Changed My Life, which she directed, co-produced, and co-wrote, has been the offical selection at eight festivals around the country. It won the Audience Award and the Silver Screenplay Award at the Crested Butte Reelfest and was the recipient of a Women in Film Finishing Fund Grant.