Ivanna Sakhno

Ivanna Anatoliyivna Sakhno is a Ukrainian actress and activist. She achieved recognition in her native country before establishing a career in international film and television productions. Internationally, she is best known for portraying Cadet Viktoriya in the 2018 science fiction feature Pacific Rim Uprising, the assassin Nadedja in the 2018 action comedy film The Spy Who Dumped Me, and the character Shin Hati in the 2023 Star Wars television series Ahsoka.

Born on November 14, 1997, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sakhno was raised in a family of filmmakers. Her mother, Halyna Kuvivchak-Sakhno, works as a director, and her father, Anatolii Sakhno, works as a cinematographer. She decided to pursue acting in 2004 after viewing the movie Amélie. At thirteen years old, she moved to Vancouver, Canada, to learn English, where casting directors Janet Hirshenson and Jane Jenkins discovered her during a casting workshop. Sakhno relocated to Hollywood in 2013 to advance her acting career. While living in the United States, she attended Beverly Hills High School and trained at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute, while also working with coach Ivana Chubbuck.

Sakhno made her first television appearance in 2005 on Lesya + Roma, a Ukrainian adaptation of the Canadian sitcom Un gars, une fille that was the first sitcom produced in the Ukrainian language. She made her debut in feature films as Milka in the 2013 biographical picture Ivan the Powerful. Her initial primary role in American cinema came in Thomas Dunn's 2016 thriller feature The Body Tree.

In 2018, Sakhno appeared in two large-budget studio releases, Pacific Rim Uprising and The Spy Who Dumped Me. Alongside her acting roles, she served as a jury member for the International Competition Program at the 10th Odesa International Film Festival in 2019. In August 2020, she again served on a festival jury at the 49th Molodist Film Festival.

Sakhno made her debut on American television in 2020, performing opposite Zoë Kravitz in the Hulu project High Fidelity. That same year, she starred in the thriller movie Let it Snow, directed by Ukrainian filmmaker Stanislav Kapralov. She subsequently appeared in the 2022 French limited series La jeune fille et la nuit, also released as The Reunion. In November 2021, Sakhno joined the cast of the Disney+ Star Wars series Ahsoka, which aired in 2023.

In addition to her screen career, Sakhno engages in political and humanitarian advocacy. At the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, she expressed support for Ukrainian political prisoners detained by Russia. Following the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, she publicly condemned Russian actions and supported Ukraine. In February 2023, she spoke at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and in April 2023, she appeared on Morning Joe to address the war and support efforts. She participated in the Artists for Ukraine fundraising event to benefit Ukrainian children displaced by war and became an Ambassador for the United24 fundraising platform in May 2023, focusing on Education and Science. Sakhno avoids playing Russian characters and terminated a contract with Netflix during the COVID-19 lockdowns to decline portraying a Soviet Russian background.