The actor: before Salvatores and Bellocchio I went hungry
“I was an introverted teenager. Dancing was the activity that took my weight off my locks. Whenever a film with Fred Astaire appeared on the television, I would light up, and my feet under the table began to dance. At 6 I tell my mother Luciana that I want to dance. She pleases me. The first day of the course they put me to be a kitten for two hours. The kitten…? In my wishes I would have liked the teacher, after having made me perform to demonstrate all my talent, would tell me: other than Fred Astaire, Filo, you are ready for Broadway! I left slamming the door. ‘
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If he hadn’t thought big from an early age, Filippo Timi would never have left Ponte San Giovanni, in Umbria, to pour on the main forms of art – theater, cinema, writing, painting, music – and their derivations – direction , television, radio – an overwhelming need for captivating communication whose origin, going up the current of that Tiber which, like Circe Ulysses, would have attracted the traveler of the word to Rome, must be sought ab egg. Here it is, somewhere in the pediatric ward of the Perugia hospital: «In my earliest memory I was just born, inside the incubator. The room is dark, there is a fan that produces a reassuring hum in the background and a blue light that shines through in the chiaroscuro. Or perhaps I have read a poem by Rimbaud and have been influenced by myself? ». Thus it will continue until the end, between truth and dream, in the presence of a multitude of embodied and incarnable characters that crowd the room of a Milanese hotel (on the table the script of the film about Monica Vitti who is about to shoot with Alba Rohrwacher and the inseparable Coca-cola), so many that at a certain point you have to open the window so as not to create a crowd.
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How was Filippo born?
“Seven months old, I was in a hurry. Mom was a nurse. When she took me home I was in the dark for two months. ‘
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Is the first light the theater?
«First there is dance and roller skating: I was strong, I competed, this explains my important thighs. At 15, because I didn’t play football, they told me a fag. Why do you label me, why do you use it as an insult, I wondered. But above all: why didn’t I have the courage to say yes? ».
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Because.
«Not an easy period, indeed: decidedly black. I graduate with 60/60 from the art institute, I ask my parents to go to university. And with what money ?, says mom, go to work with your dad (my father Nello made concrete pipes, which is not bad, mind you). Instead I enroll in Philosophy. At the first exam, on Lévi-Strauss, I take 29. The second is on Socrates, who at the symposiums showed up with blue eyeshadow over his eyes, dressed up in feminine tunics: a transvestite, let’s face it. I introduce myself dressed and made up like this. The professor is the rector of the faculty: at first he pretends nothing has happened, but when I insist on answering a question with a question (after all, it is the Socratic method), he throws me away. My university ends there. The problem is that I didn’t want to study Socrates, I wanted to embody him ».
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The identification of the Stanislavskij method.
«I was already doing theater, I never thought I could live there. I accompany a friend to the Center for Experimentation and Theatrical Research in Pontedera, they take me. At the audition I exhaust them with spinning tops and wheels without hands: you have to give yourself a forward blow with your chest, they are very tiring but exhilarating. I go on for hours, with skating training, and crash them. But my real career started when I started earning money. That is, with Salvatores and Bellocchio, I used to go hungry before. Up to the age of 25 I entered the scene so as not to stammer, to show others that I was good and myself that I existed. Then thanks to Chekhov I realized that it was more interesting to put myself at the disposal of the role and the story. In short, from concave to convex. Until you embrace your pain, however, it doesn’t happen. “
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And when did you decide to hug him?
“I recently had a down, sentimental sorrows. A dear friend, Lucia Mascino, told me: Filo you must embrace your wounded part. If you don’t hug it, you’ll ask someone else to do it from the outside, but you’ll always miss a piece. Here, this thing has totally changed my life! As if the sun had suddenly appeared in the sky: it does not mean that the clouds have disappeared, certain fragilities always resurface ».
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In the family, as a child, were you already the center of attention?
“I wouldn’t say, no. Dad was a good man but very closed, he didn’t say a word: he was sitting on the sofa, in front of the TV off. Mom ran the house with the determination of a lioness. Maybe I took charge of their desire to communicate … ».
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Is your mother Luciana at the center of your rich feminary, in the deep core of Mrs Fairytale in “Favola”?
“Yup. The day she lied to me (for a bullshit, I don’t even remember) was the end of all illusions: my expulsion from Eden ».
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Who are the artists who make up your pantheon, Timi?
«The first that really fascinated me was Jean Cocteau: the films, the novels, the poems. A genius. A creative. A less scientific Leonardo da Vinci ».
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After almost thirty years, having done so many things, have you understood what your talent is?
«It is the activity that makes me feel most at peace, whatever it is. It happens when, in the moment, I have the courage to be open. It can happen while writing, acting, painting … In the theater, however, in particular, there are situations in which you throw yourself into the void without a net. The actor’s path is this: to leave the comfort zone to represent something else. Making theater is an absolute artistic gesture, a (not empty) vote to lose. It is the only art that leaves no trace of itself except here and now. Returning to the theater after the pandemic was like making love again after two years, starting to feel the heart, the breath, the body of the other again ».
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What work are you most proud of?
“My soul”.
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It’s a job?
“No it is not”.
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The script would like you to answer here: the work I’m most proud of is the next one.
«Which is a bit true, by the way. Dream of meeting the impossible: Christopher Nolan, the Coen brothers, Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma. Nanni Moretti is my perversion. Garrone, Sorrentino, Saverio Costanzo I respect him very much, Virzì, with Bellocchio and Salvatores I would work again immediately, the brothers D’Innocenzo and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, wonderful ».
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He is in love?
“No. Indeed, yes ».
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Yes or no?
“I’m in love with myself.”
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Double dream: is this acting or reality?
«Let me explain: before I only loved work, now I try to make sense of everything. I sacrificed myself: I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep. I’m really trying to love myself a little more. I approach work in a less desperate way. It is as if I have finally understood that hell exists; there is also heaven, but it lasts a moment “.
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“The invisible thread” was released on Netflix, the story of two dysfunctional fathers in a rainbow family. At the age of 48, do you miss a child?
“I am happy uncle: with me my nephews are able to confess things that their parents would never tell. Let’s talk about everything. I think about a child: not every day, but I think about it. Without particular anxieties or expectations. I am open to the universe ».
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If they met, would Mrs Fairytale and Drusilla Foer like each other?
“Oh my God, yes! They would become best friends! Drusilla in Sanremo was a beautiful presence, she is a woman of great elegance. In Florence she came to see me at the theater, then we went out for dinner together. A pleasant evening ».
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On stage or on set, he looks fearless. And in real life what are you ashamed of?
“I’m not as cheeky as I look. Creativity lights up on stage: the ultimate goal is beauty, which can be absolute grace or a cosmic scar. In everyday life I run into so many insecurities … It is bad to say that I am ashamed but, yes, I am ashamed to ask for help, any kind of help, from the road sign to the hand that pulls you up from the abyss, and then I it comes from cursing ».
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Is this the life you dreamed of as a child, Philip?
“It is an incredibly more multifaceted and richer life! I would never have dared to hope so much. But I recognize the merit of never giving up, not even when I didn’t get to the end of the month and if there wasn’t a friend who always invited me to dinner I would consider skipping the meal “.
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What did he want to do when he grew up?
«The stylist, the actor or the Pope. As a child I was an altar boy a lot and I liked him a lot. The songs, the guitar, the rite of the Mass: it was already theater ».
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In his New Year’s show there was an invective against the senators of the Italian Parliament who have set aside the Zan Bill, the bill against homobitransphobia.
“I don’t believe in religions which, instead of including, they exclude. How wonderful that parish priest of Lonato del Garda who sang the song of Blanco and Mahmood during the Sunday homily: perhaps someone had not noticed it, but the divine part was also in Sanremo ».
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She is a Buddhist.
“I don’t really want to talk about it but I tell you this: a little more Buddhist, these Catholics, they should be … Enough with the sense of guilt.”
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April 8, 2022 (change April 8, 2022 | 22:38)
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