Kim Rossi Stuart: “Like the Leopard, I belong to an extinct era. To my children I teach that fatigue is vital “

This interview with Kim Rossi Stuart is published in number 10 of Vanity Fair, on newsstands until March 4, 2025.

TO Talk to us now, there is something different in Kim Rossi Stuart. It is the deepest, more robust voice. He says it is the legacy of Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina, The Leopard of the epochal novel by Giuseppe Tomasi of Lampedusa, and now of the Netflix series-kolossal series. «It seems nonsense, but this has remained of him. Characters like this change you existential bioritmus ».

In over 40 years of career he has collected several, on TV and in the cinema, of worship and Engagépop and author. Yet Kim Rossi Stuart cannot be framed it: he exploded with Fantaghiòand then his choices have always been sophisticated, whatever he did (including Romualdo). Its distinctive trait: elegance. Principesca. One of the reasons that pushed the director of LeopardTom Shankland, to prefer him.

Deva Cassi, Kim Rossi Stuart, Benedetta Porcaroli and Saul Nanni

First reaction when did you offer you the part?
“Pride: I was aware of the caliber of the project.”

The production is sumptuous.
“For me the symbol of this magnificence are the six thousand costumes conceived in a maniacal way: from the triple layer of raw silk shirts to the underwear, everything was made with a tailoring care worthy of the time”.

No subjection to Luchino Visconti’s film?
“For strange laps of life I have never seen him.”

And keep not seeing it?
“It will happen sooner or later. The book, on the other hand, read it after receiving part of the script, which had a little alarmed to me, because it gave access only to some disturbing aspects of the character: a giant of two meters brutal, animalized, heavy. Thanks to the novel, in which I sank, I was also able to grasp his superfine mind and his fragility. I heard it closer. I understood that with him it would not have been mere actor gymnastics. I resolved the physical similarity by gaining 12 or 13 kilos, for the Sicilian accent I turned to gods coach And the rest, oh well, is what I usually do by making my feeling available ».

Did it find points in common?
“Beyond a certain misanthropy, I found age, belonging to a world that is no longer there and also the difficulty of having to leave room for subsequent generations”.

As a father of three children of 13, 5 and 3 years old, what are concerned about the new world and the new generations?
«The first thing that comes to mind is the attempt to amputate the effort from our existence. I don’t tell her how much my wife and I put me (The actress Ilaria Spada, editor’s note) to convince Ettore, the eldest, to make an excursion to the mountains. When he returned, he had a bright look, a pacified smile. The effort is vital ».

More or less at the age of Ettore she had already gone away from home …
«I left for America alone, without speaking English, with a suitcase, an open ticket, perhaps a thousand dollars in the pocket and the telephone number of a crossed person in Rome, a Greek painter known thanks to my aunt, a which I leaned as soon as I arrived. That journey was resold in mind recently: I thought about the fact that my father and mother had let me go. What courage! Of course, they were different times, but it still sounds surreal ».

Would you let go of your son?
«Ah, I don’t! As far as it pushes with all my strength so that it is autonomous, this is too much ».

What was “too much” in his adolescence?
“I lived everything long before the others, with a frightening intensity, an out of the ordinary independence and an incredible effort. Consider that after America I did not go home, in the countryside: I moved to Rome to study theater. At the beginning I slept on the sofa of some friend, and then, at 16, I rented an apartment, in Pigneto, which was not yet fashionable ».

A regret?
“I am never able to be at the game of” what you would change of your life “. Because the concept of welcoming and accepting what I am for better or for worse is too strong in me, the organicity of what happens to me. But if she wants a regret, then I tell her that I missed the school. I abandoned the artistic high school to study acting and together work to keep myself. I missed the path with my peers, the university experiences. At 30 I had thought of trying to recover what I had lost and return to the books, but in the end I can independently deepen the themes I want and that’s okay ».

At 5 years old, the debut thanks to his father, a character in western films: she made the appearance and it seems she had not liked it much. At 14 the first leading role, in the miniseries The guys from the Mysterious Valley by Marcello Aliprandi, thanks to a lucky hitchhiking with the assistant director. When did you really choose the actor’s profession?
“When I abandoned the first theatrical acting school that I attended, of academic mold, very based on exteriority, on the Agentrism, where everything was Mors your life mea. Did we understand each other? I gave it up and I enrolled in workshops tense to the knowledge of the human soul: I discovered the wonder of common work, the sum of the talents, and I fell in love with this profession. Otherwise I would have gave up. “

He said that up to 27 years of age he had “a block of anguish”.
«It was like this: the economic precariousness and the terror of ending up under the bridges; The torture of the continuous search for consent, of being recognized as good, of the applause, from which at a certain point I began to free myself ».

Is it completely free?
“Of course not. It is a daily commitment, as well as a great loss of time, to reduce the importance of the recognition of others ».

Does it stay away from social media because I am an amplifier of the importance of the recognition of others?
“Like the Gattopardo, I belong to a now extinct era. I do not understand what my voice can add to that chaos of posts, information, fake news. Every now and then Agent and Press Office make me reflect on the opportunity to open up to this world, but then he always passes in the third order. They are already full of more urgent things to do, I have three children, a wife, I recently finished a renovation of the demanding house … ».

Ettore already goes on social media?
“I am not listed our efforts to pull it out of technology: I can’t look at it with my nose halfway through the mobile phone, which is an unacceptable Far West”.

He has already seen the series of Leopard To the family?
“No, it is not my custom to show my works at home in advance, not even those as a director.”

Not even his wife?
“I don’t feel the need. I prefer to have it by my side, together with the children, when there is the audience ».

The gotopardo Netflix is ​​much less political than Visconti’s film.
«Each creative process is to some political extent, because it implies a bare mass. The reporting projects are welcome, perhaps they should be more. But I am not convinced that everything that is defined as civil and social commitment is really, the human soul is ambivalent ».

Kim Rossi Stuart 55 years old in a scene from the Netflix series The Leopard in which he plays the Prince of Salina Role ...

Kim Rossi Stuart, 55, in a Netflix series scene The gotopardoin which he plays the prince of Salina, a role that in Luchino Visconti’s film was from Burt Lancaster.

Lucia Iuorio/Netflix

Don’t you think, therefore, that the battles and positions of certain films or of certain series are always authentic?
“I have a precise opinion about it, but it is a delicate speech and today we cannot speak of any topic openly: the exploitation has become too violent”.

What is working on now?
«I recently resumed the ranks of some of my writings that I had put aside for The gotopardo. I have two or three ideas for new films. “

Is the one set in Medjugorje still on the track?
“No, at the moment I’m not carrying it on.”

However, is it continuing to study and try to understand Christianity and “your instructions to be in this world”?
«For most of my life I was immersed in a terribly atheist context. And with terribly I mean the exaltation with force of the evils of the Church, ignoring the other side of the medal. At one point I sought sensible coordinates of living, and I approached spirituality rather than religion. I have a strong propensity towards the first, the second instead I don’t know what it is and it also sounds a little ambivalent, because it contains liturgies and habits that can be deflated in meaning ».

Don’t the films put it at peace with themselves?
“Only those I direct.”

And how is it directing today?
“I don’t remember in which chat of directors someone said:” By now we look like urban police on the set. ” It is often a race against time, it seems to be a Games without bordersthe means are those they are. But the frenzy against magic always loses: it has half hope ».

Photo Leandro Manuel Empsa
Service Nick Cerioni
Have collaborated Ilaria Taccini, Noemi Managò, Niko Prete, Marco Spagnuolo
Make-up Michele Mancaniello, Hair Sergio Cippitelliboth @Simone Belli Agency
VF producer Marina Moretti
Set designer Labatà
Virtual Production Dimension Studio
Producer on set Sugarkane Productions, Giulia Vercelli, Alex Liistle
Location Studies of Cinecittà – Theater 18
Thanks to Netflix.

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Source: Vanity Fair

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