Who I am
One frosty Sunday morning, while training on the muddy rugby pitches at Richmond park for the Rosslyn Park FC under 10’s, I was scouted. HSBC was sponsoring an advertisement for the England Rugby team’s world tour. The rugby team were to be dressed up as pirates sailing the high seas and they needed a cabin boy. I seized the opportunity and got to pass around a rugby ball around with some of the sport’s greatest players. It got better. The commercial was shot on the same ship that was the Interceptor in Pirates of the Caribbean which is moored on the Thames. One of the scenes required a couple of the rugby players to launch me up from one deck to another. We did that take more than twenty times, in the freezing cold, slight adjustments made to my landings each time. Sheer bliss.
I had been, of course, preparing for this role my whole life. My career began as the "Rockin’ Rooster" in my elementary school play; I regularly impersonated Lady Gaga by putting a chrome fruit bowl on my head or wearing my great grandmother's old mink stole. I sang with jazz bands at local clubs I was too young to be in and I joined a traveling circus which toured around Europe. Over the years, in school plays I played Ariel, Mercutio, Rosencrantz, an orphan, a ghost, and a chicken in our plays.
My mother is American, my father is Italian. I was born in New York and moved to London when I was three. My family moved back to New York when I was a sophomore in high school. It was too late to apply to Laguardia but I managed to get a spot at Beacon which I'd heard had a good theater department. Over the many productions I participated in during my three years there as an actor and stage hand, I dumped blood on a belting Carrie (the musical), got locked in a crate backstage as Peter Pan for over an hour, and convinced an audience that I, a short, tow-headed, 15-year-old, was the genius, George Frideric Handel. To be fair, my German accent was decent and I know my way around a piano enough to fake genius well.
Senior year, I applied to NYU Tisch School of the Arts and managed to get in. Half way through my sophomore year, Covid popped by to say hello and my life, like all our lives, became one of isolation and solitude. I watched a lot of classic Italian cinema to get through the days–Nights of Cabiria, Fellini’s Satyricon, I Vitelloni, Il Gattopardo, to name my favorites–and became inspired by the extraordinary costumes. Having lots of time on my hands, I taught myself how to sew and created bespoke clothing.
In June of 2020, as Italian citizens we were allowed to leave New York and go to Italy where we have a farmhouse half an hour outside of Florence. I had to leave my sewing gear behind but found a guitar along the way. I learned the guitar, bass, saxophone, piano, mandolin, and even some music production theory.
In May of 2022 I graduated with a BFA in Acting. Since then I’ve seized every opportunity to perform, and I currently have a love for the screen that I can’t escape. I’m short a pirate ship, but that hasn’t stopped me from chasing what I felt aboard the brig.
