The cinema, television and theater actor is told in the round
Per Alessandro Preziosi“The great effort of the choices is not sleeping before taking them.” But then, once the jump has been made, it no longer makes sense to mull up on it. For example, he, despite a degree in Law with full marks, has no longer asked himself how his life as a lawyer would have been. «Never done. Art taught me to love life more and I cannot say otherwise ». Preziosi is one of the protagonists of the three days of literary meetings, readings and music of the Literary Prize Corrado Alvaro-Libero Bigiaretti, scheduled in Vallerano, which will be awarded to Antonio Franchini for the novel Il Fuoco who takes you inside (“one of the most beautiful books that I have read in recent years”). This year the theme of the review is precisely the choice.
So when did you decide to be an actor?
«It was a choice that started with unconsciousness. A choice that unknowingly prophesy something, a great sixth sense that prompted me to be guided towards something bigger. The choices determine the unit of measurement of what you will be: at a certain point I decided to move to Milan to study at the Academy of Filodramatici and so everything started ».
25 years have passed, is the budget positive?
«I ask myself questions about the actor’s profession every time I go to the cinema. I watch so many movies and there I ask myself: but you like to see them or make them? ».
The answer?
“See them. But, after all, my job – which I consider the most beautiful in the world – consists in being chosen and as long as they choose I will continue to act. The first time happens because you are good, the second because someone else could not, the third because it is a challenge, the fourth the film produces it alone. There are many different occasions, but in these 25 years I have always had the conditions to be able to pursue a talent: it doesn’t only have to be to be but needs to be recognized ».
Would he go back change something?
«The only hesitation I have are the unleaded, the posed of the choices or the inertia of the choices, those yes. For the rest, everything I really chose to discover, for better or for worse, even on a sentimental level, put me in front of the luminous aspect of the opportunities ».
Is there a film that, for some reason, marked it?
«The Hamlet of Zeffirelli: I loved everything. The story, the voice of Giannini who doubled Mel Gibson, the scenography, the clarity of the discomfort. At the time I was a boy, I said only: I liked it. But culture makes you travel in other worlds. I crossed a thousand borders, from politics to philosophy. I was Sant’Agostino and Matteotti, a homosexual and a Camorra, and then Van Gogh, Cyrano, King Lear. Travel in the lives of others who prompted me to deepen, to know new things ».
Alvaro and Bigiaretti were friends. Who are his friends?
«The same for at least twenty years. My biggest is a person I collaborate with, graduated in architecture: he also thought he would have done anything else in life. In the world of cinema I don’t have any, if not wonderful parenthesis. Those who consider these friends who have always been there, with whom you don’t talk about other people, unlike what I often see, but with whom the great themes are discussed. Friendships are a wonderful art form ».
If it were to identify particular moments in his career, which would mention?
«My first direction at the theater, Cyrano De Bergerac, because through a great classic I deepened many nuances of my belonging to mankind: unrequited love, courage, dignity, beauty not linked only to physical aspect. Then I quote a film that has never been distributed, the cure, directed by Francesco Patierno and inspired by La Peste di Camus: it is a film that told the Covid and the going to the rescue of others, he changed the connotations to me. And then my latest theatrical show, Adriano’s memories, which acts slowly: I am an age in which I have to deal with my little soul, which must increasingly take place in the body “.
Was beauty for you a limit or an opportunity?
“But what limit? If they were all so limits … in my works I think he counted fifty percent. The other fifty depended on something else. Then, of course, time passes, the children grow up, the readings change, alive the first mourning … it is normal that it also changes the perception of beauty ».
He also said he knows unrequited love …
«The love that does not correspond to you I know it and I know that it makes you ask questions about yourself. The real problem is not to love but to be loved, so even unrequited love I have never lived as a limit but, indeed, as a responsibility ».
In recapitulating the cornerstones of her career he did not mention “Elisa di Rivombrosa”, which gave her great fame. How do you consider that series today?
«When Elisa from Rivombrosa arrived I was not ready. I was not up to that well -made product of my partner Vittoria (Puccini, mother of her second daughter, ed), of the director (Cinzia Th Torrini). I was put into one thing and I discovered I knew nothing. The fact is that since then for a long time I have always faced costume roles, they always offered me those, so much so that when that portal arrived that brought me back to today, sineth mines, I had gigantic difficulties ».
What kind?
«In being natural and telling a contemporary character. I remember what Özpetek said to me when I finished my first joke: “Well, we are going to say this at the Valle Theater”, as if to emphasize that I had to express myself in a more natural way. For me it was a great teacher, I chose to let me go ».
The theatrical setting does not always pay to the cinema.
«At the theater we are used to saying things because we think about it. At the cinema no and it is not easy to do it: they are two very distant championships, I try to play in both ».
You have two children: Edoardo, born in 1995 and Elena in 2006. What does it mean for her to be a father?
«Paternity allowed me to explore the meaning of life. Clearly I say it with hindsight, but surely I have to pay attention to that wonderful work of art that is man, there is not a doubt “.
Is it the father he thought he was?
«I have the great regret of having made the father and not the parent. You do the parent when you live with your children under the same roof and this is certainly a role that I miss. I would have liked to live that daily dimension more, then maybe I wouldn’t have been good enough … but it’s not knowing the problem: I would have preferred not to know other things compared to this. The fact, however, is that they came up very well ».
Do you frighten the present they are experiencing? Many of his colleagues have expressed themselves on the Gaza war.
«I do not go into the historicity of that land, but it had to be a factory of life while today it is the factory of death, as Erri De Luca also says in his journey to the roots of hatred. It speaks of a land that, in the promise, has “menstrual of milk and honey”. Things are very different, as we see. The impotence is unbearable for all of us: we can do nothing but demonstrate ».
Do you believe that artists should expose themselves or is it not their task?
«The artist must express himself. This is what speaks in a room where people are silent to listen. He must push to think, to ask questions. I admired Javier Bardem who shows up with Palestine scarf at Emmy, I don’t find myself with those who refuse to share a stage with those who see it differently. However, there is a fact, that is, the unnecessary death of all these people: it is an evident political problem ».
