Ellen DeGeneres announces return to acting with first role in five years

The actor announced her move to the UK in November 2024 after Donald Trump was reelected as US president
Ellen DeGeneres has returned to the entertainment business to reprise her voice role as Dory in a new Pixar project.

The former host of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, 68, will be featured in a short for the Finding Nemo universe, according to a Friday report from Deadline .

The plot for the still-untitled short and release date plans have not yet been announced.

The comedian later confirmed the news by sharing a screenshot of the Deadline report on her Instagram.

“Excited about this,” she wrote in the caption.

The new gig marks DeGeneres’s first acting project in five years.

She was last featured in a 2021 mini-series, Pixar Popcorn , where she also voiced Dory.

DeGeneres’ iconic animated character is a lovable and talkative blue tang fish who suffers from short-term memory loss.

In Finding Nemo , released in 2003, Dory helps clownfish Marlin in his search for his young son, Nemo.

DeGeneres was part of the 2016 Finding Nemo sequel , Finding Dory , which follows Dory’s journey from the Great Barrier Reef to California’s Marine Life Institute to find her parents.

Finding Dory was a massive success at the box office, ranking in a massive $486 million in the U.S.

and more than $1 billion worldwide at the time of its release .

The movie has been consistently ranked as one of the top 15 animated films of all time.

However, a source told the publication that DeGeneres was not moving back to America permanently, with plans to split her time between the U.K.

and Montecito, California.

DeGeneres confirmed in July 2025 that she and her wife moved to the U.K.

because Donald Trump was elected for a second term.

“Yes.

We got here the day before the election and woke up to lots of texts from our friends with crying emojis, and I was like, ‘He got in.’ And we’re like, ‘We’re staying here,’” she said during a live conversation with broadcaster Richard Bacon.

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