This article is published in issue 8 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until February 21, 2023
He would have preferred to be at home, but his fiancée is sleeping and doesn’t want to wake her up. With a fluorescent yellow windbreaker and dark sunglasses, Andrea Dodero, 25, one of the Italian actors with the highest potential for success overseas, walks and talks, talks and walks in circles in the neighborhood that has adopted him . Every now and then he stops to relight the cigarette, extinguished by Giannetta that pulls hard in these Roman mornings, or to let away some car horn that breaks the quiet of the Aventine. He says he doesn’t miss his Genoa. The beautiful and incredible things that have happened to him since he moved here he tells them like this: «I met Elisa (Nardini, also an actress, ed), who taught me happy love and the right approach to auditions. In just a few years, I’ve made my way through the ranks more fun than tiring. I’ve acted with great artists, the greatest so far is Denzel Washington, in the film The Equalizer 3, which we finished shooting a few months ago. I’m going to the Berlin International Film Festival (February 16-26, ed) with a very powerful Disney+ series on the fight against the ‘Ndrangheta: The Good Mothers».
Was he immersed in a different life before all this?
«I was a pastry chef. After graduating I started working at Rocco D’Arrigo, an institution in Genoa».
How do you go from sweets to scripts?
«I’ve been acting since I was a child, specialty: Santa Claus who speaks five or six dialects. From 13 to 17 I attended the Quinta Practicable acting school. But it took a stroke of unhappiness and a crazy evening to find the courage to go and get my destiny».
How crazy?
«I’ve never been the type to smoke joints on benches or make noise: I preferred to build a crossbow, like MacGyver, and test it on the beach; discovering hip pop, when it wasn’t mainstream yet, and Lucio Dalla on vinyl, while in Genoa you only listened to techno. I stayed away from fashions and fashions wave provincial. That evening I recognized my unhappiness and a true friend understood that it was the right time to tell me: “Do it, go to Rome!”. With the madness of 19 I left, I felt that I could destroy and build, fall and get up again».
Can’t you hear it anymore? It hasn’t been that long since then…
«No, today I can’t repeat myself: “And these cocks!”, forgive my French! Paradoxically, I succeeded when I didn’t have a penny in the hole and I didn’t get half an audition».
Parents’ reaction to his departure?
“Denzel Washington asked me the same thing! They weren’t surprised, after all they were used to someone like me who woke up one morning and went to Fez, Morocco, to meet the family of my friend Shukri. And then, they are convinced that children don’t belong to anyone, not even to those who give them birth. They have always left us plenty of room for important choices. Yes, I have an older sister and brother. He, for example, attempted a career in football.”
What work do his mother and father do?
“Mom is a dietician, dad is a gynecologist but he is retired”.
Their most valuable teaching?
“‘Earn every penny.’ Moral: I never had a penny until I was 23!».
Andrea Dodero, 25 years old, actor, in a scene from The Good Mothers, coming soon on Disney+ and in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival in the Berlinale Series section with première on February 21st. With him in the cast Gaia Girace (The brilliant friend), Barbara Chichiarelli (Suburra – The series), Valentina Belle (Catch-22).
What did he do with the first big salary?
«It was an advance of ten thousand euros. I took Elisa to dinner. We were in Milan, I googled “most beautiful restaurants”. We ended up at the Langosteria with a very professional waiter who didn’t leave us alone».
How did you get to that first salary?
«My Roman mess tin? I started the Fondamenta acting school: I attended in the morning, I worked there in the afternoon, but it still cost too much. So I identified a teacher: Giuseppe Argirò, also from Genoa, and I asked him to give me private lessons. I left Fondamenta. I found an agency that would let me audition. Then I entered the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia: another school, another trouble. The pandemic had just broken out, distance learning wasn’t the best, especially doing acrobatics exercises in the kitchen; moreover I could not work: the maximum limit of absences allowed per year was 9%. And we finally get to February 18, 2021, when they take me in Block 181».
How many no and how many jabs at self-esteem before that unforgettable February 18, 2021? “A lot. For example, both for the film Do not hate both for the series mental I auditioned for the lead role and didn’t get it. But both directors, Mauro Mancini and Michele Vannucci, found me some poses. It often happened to me to get to the final stage of the selections and not make it in the last lap».
It didn’t happen with the Sky series Block 181which portrays the Milanese suburbs between violence, love and rap.
“We’ll start filming the second season soon.”
The rapper is in the cast Psalm, as an actor, music supervisor and creative producer. Are you in touch?
«We hear little, we text each other more. I’ve grown fond of him, I love him as I would a crazy uncle who moved to Brazil at the age of 20».
Did you also like Denzel Washington?
«On the set he follows his own practice: he doesn’t speak to you until his character turns with yours. Then he lets go of the armor of leading Hollywood actor, he tells anecdotes, jokes. At one point I was able to recite his monologue for him in a low voice Training daywhich I know by heart: I did exactly that and he burst out laughing».
Were you a little intimidated at first?
«Not only with Denzelone. If I usually talk about you, in this case I called everyone Sir And Madame: I turned and saw Robert Richardson, three Oscars as director of photography, Dakota Fanning, the director Antoine Fuqua…».
How many tryouts to conquer him?
«One, against the six, even seven, of Italian productions».
Have you wondered why?
«Yes, and I found an answer that doesn’t raise controversy, which I don’t want: eight months ago, on the occasion of the release of Block 181in an interview for Vanity Fair, I was asked who my go-to actor was and I said Denzel Washington. It was written”.
On Vanity Fair as in fate. Would you like to name a second leading actor? «Ricky Gervais and Luca Marinelli, two artists who represent me».
Do you not feel represented by politics?
“In no way. In fact, my generation has learned to live with the certainty of not having a future».
Would you leave Italy for America?
«My place is here, next to Elisa».
So let’s talk about love.
“We met because I’m a bloody procrastinator. End of August 2020: I was out of time to prepare a video audition, I hadn’t organized myself and I couldn’t find the ring light, the ring of light that everyone now uses for social media. I was saved by Elisa: she had one and a mutual friend sent me to her. If ever a Wikipedia page were to be dedicated to me, I would like a special mention for Elisa. She changed me. Since we’ve been together, I’ve even had a different approach to auditions: I’ve understood that supporting them is a real job and this gives me an incredible dignity, a dignity that I’ve been looking for for a long time. I used to come home from a set and ask myself: can it be called a job? You can and you must, it depends on how you deal with it. Elisa is also an excellent adviser on Instagram: I am without filters».
On his profile he defines himself as an “actor of condominium fame”. What does he mean he?
«That I’m famous only at home, with my mother who goes around Genoa with newspaper clippings about me in her bag and says to the butcher: “Have you seen my son?”».
On February 21, they will see her all over the world at the Berlinale for The Good Mothers. Who is the character of him?
«Carmine Venturino, protagonist of the real chronicles: a former affiliate of the ‘Ndrangheta, in 2009 he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the kidnapping and murder of the former repentant Lea Garofalo. He was in love with Denise Cosco, daughter of Lea herself and her boss who, together with Carmine, killed her. The series is a choral work that weaves together the stories of these women who rebel against their families».
He’s collecting a string of bad guys. It is also in The Equalizer 3. Why do you think?
«Maybe the productions see me interpret it once… But perhaps it’s easier for them to look at my photographic book and think: “Kill me who’s the son of a whore!”, as they said at castings in Rome in the 70s» .
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Source: Vanity Fair

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