It is 15.47, Friday 11 May, 2012. This is my first blog post for a pretty big host (if you say it out loud it rhymes) and the day that Dark Shadows by Tim Burton, the movie where I had my first little, very little, role, is out.
The sun is almost shining - here in London it is a rare circumstance - and I feel I have to somehow celebrate. Therefore I just poured myself a glass of red wine (the one my mum shipped me from my hometown, I find it grounding). I suppose it also helps to ease the nerves, my publicist had to insist quite a bit for me to accept this writing challenge. I mean, how can I keep a reader interested when I live in the linguistic limbo of an Italian based in London?
Most probably by talking about my newest career: acting. My publicist (her again, and who'd ever imagined a few months back I would have ever needed one?) said: "Just start from that photo," pointing at a still from the set.
There I am, harnessed to a high cliff on the coast of Southern England, wearing a beautiful costume made by Colleen Atwood, three times Oscar winner, listening to directions shouted by Mr Tim Burton (he was all the way down on the shore).
How did I find myself there? Hard to say. I have only decided to give it a go a couple of years ago at this acting job, more because I didn't want to have any regrets when, as an old woman, I would be sitting on a wicker chair on the porch of a wooden house in a Caribbean country (or the South of France? Tuscany?) reviewing my life.
I started to take lessons purely for the purpose of learning English, and one lesson after the other it was all there, my reel, a few student jobs. Just recently I found an old email I wrote to a dear friend where I was jokingly saying that in my dream list there was to be in a Tim Burton movie. You know what?
This, more than a blog, seems the beginning of a bad biography. Alas, for now, I say goodbye. Part two, with the things you really want to know will come in June.
Stay tuned if you wish. And if you made it reading it until the end and want to give me some advice on what to write next, go ahead. I love advice, although, I must admit, I rarely follow it.