Ellen DeGeneres has announced her return to acting, reprising her iconic voice role as Dory in a new Pixar project set within the Finding Nemo universe. The 68-year-old former talk show host will feature in a short film, according to a report from Deadline on Friday. Plot details and a release date for the untitled short have yet to be revealed.
DeGeneres Confirms the News
The comedian confirmed the report by sharing a screenshot of the Deadline article on her Instagram, captioning it: “Excited about this.” The project marks DeGeneres’s first acting role in five years; her last was in the 2021 mini-series Pixar Popcorn, where she also voiced Dory.
A Beloved Character Returns
Dory, a lovable blue tang fish with short-term memory loss, first appeared in the 2003 hit Finding Nemo, helping clownfish Marlin search for his son. The character returned in the 2016 sequel Finding Dory, which followed her journey to find her parents. That film grossed $486 million in the U.S. and over $1 billion worldwide, consistently ranking among the top 15 animated films of all time.
Life Between the UK and US
DeGeneres’s upcoming Pixar role comes months after she returned to the U.S. In February, People reported that she and her wife, Portia de Rossi, purchased a new home in California. However, a source indicated the move is not permanent; the couple plans to split their time between the U.K. and Montecito, California.
DeGeneres confirmed in July 2025 that she and de Rossi 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.
Only a month later, the couple put their Cotswolds home on the market for $30 million, having paid $20 million for it in spring 2024. “When we decided to live here full time, we knew that Portia couldn’t live without her horses,” DeGeneres said in a statement. “We needed a home that had a horse facility and pastures for them.”
