ITALY ON SCREEN TODAY Interview & Q&A of Sergio Castellitto by Andrea Visconti

  1. Sergio Castellitto Early Years @ NY Italy On Screen Today (English Translation)
  2. Sergio Castellitto On Getting Into The Academy (English Translation)
  3. Sergio Castellitto Anecdote On Telling His Family He Has Chosen To Be An Actor (English Translation)
  4. Sergio Castellitto On Moving From The Theatre To Film (English Translation)
  5. Sergio Castellitto Talks About This Film As A Homage To His Family (English Translation)
  6. Sergio Castellitto On What Makes A Good Actor (English Translation)
  7. Sergio Castellitto On Becoming An Actor, Writer & Director
  8. Andrea Visconti Asks Sergio Castellitto About His Early Years (Italian)
  9. Andrea Visconti Asks Sergio Castellitto On Getting Into The Academy (Italian)
  10. Sergio Castellitto Anecdote On Telling His Family He Has Chosen To Be An Actor (Italian & English Translation)
  11. Andrea Visconti Asks Sergio Castellitto On Moving From The Theatre To Film (Italian)
  12. Sergio Castellitto Talks About This Film As A Homage To His Family (Italian)
  13. Sergio Castellitto On What Makes A Good Actor (Italian)
  14. Andrea Visconti Asks Sergio Castellitto On Becoming An Actor, Writer & Director (Italian)


by romy valentina for FILMbutton

On Friday, October 20th Italy on Screen Today along with Italian Association of Cultural Arts and Media celebrated the works of Italian actor/filmmaker Sergio Castellitto with an interview and Q&A by Andrea Visconti. Sergio delivered newspapers in his early twenties near the Termini Train Station in Rome. This is where he discovered the Silvio D’Amico National Academy for Dramatic Arts. Having surpassed the age limit to enroll in acting classes, he instead took directing classes. Still, he continued to pursue his true passion for acting shortly after graduating. Growing up in a traditional Italian household of 5 children all with practical professions, a career in the arts was not a future his family initially wanted to nor knew how to support. Nevertheless, Sergio flourished.

Sergio started his acting career by performing in classical theatre. After a few years, he grew a desire and curiosity to continue onto film acting. At the time, the Italian acting community saw a strong differentiation between theatrical and film acting and the transference of an actor between one to the other was considered to be a “betrayal” in the art world. Sergio was one of the few to make transition from theatre and film and went on to perform in a total of 70 movies to date.

His most recent film he directed was Fortunata (Lucky), a story of a lower class mother and the struggles her and her daughter face after leaving her abusive husband. Common themes in his films are misery, misfortune, and the “wonderful unknown”. He tends to focus his stories on the lives of those less privileged. To Sergio, there is beauty in pain, poverty, humanness, and imperfection. Likewise, to Sergio there is “nothing interesting in perfection”. He pointed out that while there is a focus on misery, his films always provide the audience with a window of hope in the end. Through the gritty sorrow, his characters somehow find some sense of freedom. Fortunata received an award for best leading actress (Jasmine Trinca) at Cannes Film Festival 2017.

Sergio believes that the rumour that actors are timid is true, because the actor must fear his performance just as much as he loves it. The seduction of the art is in the “schizophrenic ambivalence” of it all. He explains that an actor must be like a “crystal glass” that can be filled with milk, then emptied and quickly filled back up with liquor, emphasizing the necessity for duality in this profession. As a believer of there being no thrill without fear, Sergio knew it was a problem when his fear started to dissipate after years of experience and comfort started to settle in. He felt that he was no longer acting but reacting. It wasn’t until he met his wife, Margaret that the thrill and fear of love was brought back into his world and his work.

They say the best directors are ones who have acted before. This is undoubtedly true for Sergio, having an unparalleled empathy for his actors. Sergio explained that there he gets a physiological response watching his actors on set. If one of his actors has a pain in his leg, he feels a pain in his leg when he watches them. In another example of emotional and physical pain connecting in the moment of a true performance, Sergio explained having gone to set one day (as an actor) with a crippling toothache. Once the director yelled “action”, he would be so immersed in the scene that his pain completely dissipated, but returned as soon as the director yelled “cut”.

Sergio’s supreme dedication to his art brought him the well-deserved Nino Manfredi Art Excellence Award. Following, three-time academy award winner Vittorio Storaro was honoured with the Wind of Europe International Award by the European Parliament, an award given to outstanding artists and symbols of multiculturalism. 

The evening closed with a screening of Non ti Muovere (Don’t Move), a film which Sergio Castellitto wrote, directed and starred in along Penelope Cruz about an upper class brain surgeon and his haunted memories of a tumultuous affair with a woman from the slums of Italy.

Romy Valentina is a New York based actress and aspiring film maker. She holds a BA in Psychology and Film Studies from Queens College. Aside from acting and film, her interests lie in travel, real estate, and wine making.

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