Italian Actress Alba Rohrwacher Cleans Up After Angelina Jolie in ‘Maria’

Alba Rohrwacher made a point to step out of Angelina Jolie’s shadow with her role in Maria.

The 45-year-old Italian actress stars opposite the Oscar winner in filmmaker Pablo Larraín‘s biopic as Maria Callas’ housekeeper Bruna Lupoli. And while Rohrwacher says she already knew plenty about the renowned opera singer “because we are Italian,” it was the woman in Maria’s shadow in all the images she found while researching Bruna that captured her attention.

“I started to discover this incredible, tiny, elegant woman, which was Bruna Lupoli,” she tells The Hollywood Reporter. “What I could find about her was only the things that the other people say about her. And so I slowly built an idea and I started to discover her in all the images of Maria Callas and say, ‘Who is this woman behind her trying to hide herself?’”

So Rohrwacher took her fascination with Bruno, her passion for the arts since she was little and her experience as a seasoned actor — having appeared in dozens of Italian films — to help shine a light on someone who always appeared in the background.

Below, Rohrwacher chats with THR about what it was like working alongside Jolie and Larraín on Maria, collaborating with her director sister Alice Rohrwacher, starring in the fourth and final season of My Brilliant Friend and more.

What was it like working alongside Jolie and Larraín on Maria, which explores the life of Maria Callas, the world’s greatest opera singer?

I’d admired Pablo Lorraine, I admired everything he did and when he was looking for me [for the role of Bruna], I was very, very happy and I didn’t even need to read the script. Of course the script is important, but for me, the vision of the director is also something very important to me, to say, “I will give you part of my life.” So my instinct was like, I will follow him. And then I discovered an incredible script and I discovered that Angelina would be Maria, and sharing this experience with her was incredible because I think we found each other immediately and she welcomed me immediately with a very open heart. So I found the key of my character, someone that decided to give her life to someone else. Someone who has no ego at all, and someone very humble and loyal. I love this character, I love the austerity of the character. 

Going back to the beginning, what made you first want to become an actor?

When I was a child, I had this desire because I was studying gymnastics, acrobatics. I grew up in the countryside and there was a forest and a village nearby and during the summer in the village, by chance, a French circus arrived but was like a circus with actors and clowns. It was like an artistic family. And I had this kind of instinct that I want to follow them. So I remember that I had the little postcard at the end of the show you could buy and there was like a child wearing a strange hat, like a clown face. And I put this little poster just near my bed, so every night I was going to sleep looking at him, looking at this possibility. So this was for sure like the first instinct to give my life to this kind of adventure. And then when I was able to move from the village, I arrived in the city and I had the opportunity to do a theater class. And immediately I understood that I wanted to do this in my life, but I needed to study and that’s why I did all the things to get admitted to the National School of Cinema, which is maybe the most important place in Italy where you can study acting.  

So you instantly knew you wanted to express yourself in a creative way.

When I saw them doing a little bit of clownery acting, I had the feeling that I need to be someone else which was at the time, a clown or an acrobat, but could be someone that could help me to not only be myself but to give myself to someone else that could improve my emotion, that would teach me something new about me. It’s something also very mysterious and magic that it’s linked to for me, a desire. 

How does it feel to have the support of your sister, Alice Rohrwacher, and to know she understands the film industry as well as a director? 

It was very strange because I’m two years older than Alice and we didn’t say to each other, “I want to be an actress, I want to be a director.”  We are very similar somehow and so very different [laughs]. … We look at the same planet with the same desire and two different thoughts, [and] we arrive in the same place, sharing a possibility to work together also with different roles. And now to have this possibility is incredible because when we work together, it’s like something so special because you work with someone that you trust so much. We just understand each other immediately and … the creativity is full of life already. … And we are able to say to each other the truth, even if the truth is not comfortable. But it’s a truth that could allow us to find the better side of us, so it’s like to improve. I could say to my sister things that maybe people are afraid to say to her because she’s the director. And she could say to me things and push me to a place where I don’t want to go because maybe I have my fragility.  

How excited were you to star in the fourth and final season of HBO’s My Brilliant Friend after narrating the character Elena Greco for several years?

Yes, it was like a huge journey, a big responsibility [laughs]. We started everything seven years ago and it was a way to find the character, to understand the character in a very unique way because of the possibility to slowly find my Elena [compared to the actors who played her younger versions]. … So I had an immense sense of gratitude as it was a very, very tough journey and wonderful and I will remember it forever. I understand so many things about me thanks to Elena. She allowed me to understand also all my contradictions, thanks to her contradictions. And it was very interesting to play for one year, this kind of character, someone that’s struggling between her sentimental life and her family life. 

If you had to describe what makes Alba Rohrwacher, Alba Rohrwacher, what would you say? 

When I believe something, every fear disappears. This is maybe something that could be a good characteristic. I’m able to believe also in something which is impossible to believe in the artistic process. … There are two sides of this. In the artistic process, [it] could be something that gave me a superpower but also it’s something that could make me very vulnerable. It’s a double power.