If you had choose a character from a movie to describe to me how you feel right now, who would it be and why?

Edward Scissorhands: I am scared by the rest of the world but I am also curious to meet new people and discover new things.

 

When understand that you wanted to be an actor?

There is not a specific moment really. I think it has always been unconsciously obvious to me. First it was meters and meters of Super-8 film being wasted when I was between 3 and 4 year old. I would steal the video camera off my dad and I would film myself or get someone to join in. I was pretending to present the news, TV shows or reciting poetry that the nuns taught me. Stupid stuff...my family uses them to blackmail me sometimes.

 

I have come to learn that every actor a moment of revelation in their career. It’s that moment that he says ‘I am trying’ to be an actor or ‘I want to be an actor’ etc. So there’s a moment when you feel ready to ask yourself, ‘what do you want to be in life?’, answer: ‘an actor’. How do you see it?

I think it's a mechanism of defence because many "actors" say that people don't take them seriously so you wait long enough to be able to list movies you were in before claiming you are an actor... even if it's 10 years you have been working at it.

 

What would you bring with you on a set if you could pick only one thing?

- a chair

- a lot of patience

- a book

- an ipod

- none of these 4, tell me yours

A computer, so I actually connected options 3 and 4 and I added a hard disk full of movies. I can't sit on the computer but for sure it can help me not loosing my patience using my time constructively while I wait.

 

Entropy or Synaesthesia? Pick one and explain why.

Entropy because it reminds me of my home during creative moments, an inspiring mess. A chaotic system that has a positive entropy, which always gives new information. In the apparent mess there is a hidden tidiness (although difficult to get) and this complexity feeds us info.

What I think makes you a really interesting person is that, besides being an actor, you are developing an artistic research that is very personal and belongs to your demons or ghosts (can we call them that?) that re-interprets them in an artistic key. Can you talk about it?

I can't stop, I hate wasting days, hours, and minutes and I try to make the most of spare time. In my main occupation sometimes you are just waiting for someone to confirm you for a part or to start a project, and it is boring to just be acting behind closed doors. This gives you the chance to express yourself in other ways, independently. Time is precious! At the beginning it was something I would do only for myself. I'd paint and then hide my works behind furniture, a sort of journal for me. Along with that, I'd write stories, One day these two things met. Stories started to talk about paintings and painting began to tell stories. ‘Senzacuore’ were born. It's a project I have been following for a couple of years. It's cathartic, you are right, I free myself through my ghosts. I exorcise fears and bad memories through them giving them names and faces. Impersonating suicides of my ghosts I consider them defeated, therefore overcome. And then there are the Secchi, my puppets. But that's another story!

 

How would you explain your job to:

- a kid

- your Mother

- a friend

- someone you don't know

As I have explained it to you, in a rather bad way!

 

What's your back-up plan?

My back up plan is my plan and vice versa. I would like to engage people emotionally somehow and I will do it, in some way!

Your job is based on professionalism and passion but at the same time on a strategy of positioning yourself that is very similar to the way you would market a brand. Do you enjoy that side of your job or you'd rather act without these strings attached?

My job involves trying to invest my energies in the projects I believe in and cooperate with the artists/authors I hold in esteem!

 

Acting is one of the few jobs in, especially in the show business, in which you don't experience - at least first-hand - the wave of Social Network that has changed other jobs. Sure, it has been said that Hollywood actors are also chosen depending on how many followers they have on Twitter and that also auditions are turning digital, but the job doesn't change as much. I think it's very poetic. Do you? What might be the evolution of your job in the next 100 years? Is there going to be an evolution?

Only today I learned I have to do an audition for myself. To Interview myself, zipping everything and uploading it on a database. I already know it's going to be a mess. I hope actors won't be substituted completely by 3D animation that will become holograms that then will become…

 

The movies that everyone should have seen: name me 5.

I'd name 40, but anyway:

8 e mezzo

Citizen Kane

The Shining

Nightmare Before Christmas

Harold and Maude

 

Which question would you ask yourself?

If Marzullo (ndr: a show man who always asks this question) had to ask a question to himself which one would be?

 

What would you answer?

What kind of question did you ask yourself, Eduardo? Apologise to Ivan. Sorry Ivan. :)

Written by Ivan Olita 

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All photographs - Alessandro Cantarini