Veera W. Vilo

Veera W. Vilo was born in Oulu, North of Finland on September 22, 1990 as a first child for two architects. She grew up in Espoo, South-Coast of Finland. At the age of eight she began her musical studies with playing a trumpet for six years. A year later she started her gymnastics career ending up winning an Aesthetic Group Gymnastics junior world championship with her team Deltat in the gymnastics club Olarin Voimistelijat in 2005. She eventually quit her musical studies in order to concentrate more on her gymnastics career, which eventually led to her winning an Aesthetic Group Gymnastics senior world championship and a world cup gold with Deltat in 2008. She graduated from Haukilahti High School in 2009 with an art stipend. Ending her gymnastics career the same year, she decided to pursue acting. She went on to study acting at the West-Finland college for a year in 2010, gaining experience on stage and landing her first film roles the same year. In 2011 she moved to the UK to start her BA Acting studies at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David and living in Carmarthen, Wales for three years. During her last year at the university before graduating she starred in a notorious Finnish horror-comedy Bunny the Killer Thing (2015) (2015). The film set in motion a new wave of Finnish independent film and ended up gaining her international recognition for her screen work. During the filming she also met her future spouse Roope Olenius. After her graduation in 2014 Vilo moved back to Finland to pursue making films with the people she had so successfully gotten acquainted with during the filming of Bunny the Killer Thing. In 2015 Vilo and Olenius were cast together to play siblings in Sami Pöyry's thriller Red Static (2021) (2021), which they both ended up producing. This resulted in her establishing a boutique production and distribution company Bright Fame Pictures together with Olenius. In 2016 they filmed Tuftland (2017) (2017), in which she acted as an actress-producer with Olenius directing. In 2019 it was announced that Vilo would be playing the lead role in Free Skate (2022) (2022), which is a drama-thriller set in the figure skating world written by Vilo. Vilo lives in Espoo, Finland with Olenius and their three children.