Camilla Filippi

At school. When the schools still worked (laughs). I attended an experimental school, three days per week, in the afternoon, there were activities related to theater, visual education, computer technology. The passion was born there, and as a result I told my mother that I wanted to become an actress: a choice she supported, even though I was not part of a family linked in any way to the show business.

An admirable choice… Shouldn’t that be, after all, the role of a parent? Supporting children no matter how remote those choices may seem to us? 

I was also very young and I am convinced that when you are 20, if you have a dream, after high school, it does not cost too much to try making it come true, to try to see how it goes. Even if it goes wrong, you have a life ahead to get back on the tracks…

The quality of your career path is in your eclecticism: you acted in films designed for TV, TV series, cinema’s movies, in comic and dramatic roles: what attracts you to a character? How do you choose the roles that belong to you? 

Let’s dispel a myth: there are few actors who choose which roles to play. Of course, there are things that I don’t do, roles that I know won’t belong to me and so I don’t even go to auditions. But otherwise, we always try to give complexity and nuances to the character, regardless of the type of production. Being an actor means putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, experiencing tragedies or the most banal difficulties, eviscerating them.

Was there a character where you underestimated the psychological impact of its role or where you can say, after all, that you weren’t ready for? 

I certainly underestimated the emotional impact of Stella, the protagonist of “La Stanza” (a thriller with horror traits that begins with the protagonist in a wedding dress, convinced to take her own life and stopped by a providential ringing at the door, ed). Psychologically it was very heavy. And she made me even more aware than before, on the fact that going into analysis is crucial, and should become natural for everyone, like putting on underwear before leaving the house.

After the Weinstein scandal, which broke out in 2015, a lot has changed, at least in appearance, in the world of Hollywood cinema. As an actress and woman with a successful career, what would you recommend to a young girl who would like to pursue your profession? 

I would advise her to study, but also to live, because we tell stories about human beings, so the more personal experience you have, the greater your cultural and emotional baggage is, and the more we enrich our characters. And, another equally important thing I’d say to her, is to never be afraid to express her opinion.

And to a younger yourself, with today’s experience, would you recommend anything? 

I would tell her that it is okay: I have been always very consistent in my choices, I have been strong, thanks to my family formation: I was educated in dignity. Today a lot of communication and promotion of one’s work also passes through social media.

What is your relationship with them?

I only use Instagram, I left everything else. If it weren’t anachronistic, I wouldn’t use that either. But it has a ‘political’ value when there is a following. I believe that unfortunately the great fault of social media is having set free a certain neglect of ignorance. We are no longer ashamed of it. A thing that scares me but which unfortunately we have to live with. As a young girl I often felt like a goat, I tended to shut up if I didn’t know what we were talking about, then I went to inform myself, studying, to fill what I saw as gaps. A task that nowadays should belong to the school. It should, at least…

Recent Golden Globes nominations, thanks to the pandemic, given up in the face of the power of products made by Amazon and Netflix, to which the Hollywood Academy waged a ruthless war in recent years. Do you find that there are qualitative differences between productions created for cinema and those made for and often by the giants of streaming distribution? 

Right now I don’t think there is a qualitative or narrative difference. The approach I have, as an actress, is the same, I put the same quality into it. Of course, as a spectator the experience is different, even if after a year of pandemic, thanks to the arrival of high quality serial products, I realized that sitting on the couch and spending an hour and a half in front of the screen is complex. I miss a lot going to the cinema as a spectator, I don’t even remember the last film I saw in the hall anymore…

And at home instead? 

“Padre Nostro”, with Pierfrancesco Favino. I also started to watch the second season of “Big Little Lies”, I find it a masterpiece, because it is a project realized only by women. It would be wonderful to do something similar in Italy, but on one hand there is a certain snobbery, on the other we are far behind: the woman in Italian products, film or television, is always someone’s mother, wife, sister.

Is Italian cinema still very macho? 

I’ll tell you something: in “La Stanza” movie, I am very traumatized by events, without make-up tricks, messy hair. On the narrative side, it would have been illogical to play that role fully dressed and made up, after all. Two different men I know, watching the film, then told me: «Damn! How ugly they made you». They would never even thought that of a man. They would compliment him on how he got into the part. And the saddest thing is that it came out from two extremely intelligent people. Just to tell you which level we are in.