CATCHING UP: With Edoardo Miranda
we spoke to Edoardo back in September, since then he’s been working on a few projects especially one titled “For Lila” which is soon to be released.
in the meantime, films by Ashley caught up with the actor in a new interview.
You mentioned in a previous article that you wrote a novel, titled “The Boy Who Laughs". How does the main character represent you? Give a little deep dive.
Yes, when I was 18 I started writing a semi-autobiographical novel that I completed years later as an adult during the Covid-19 pandemic. This novel represents my deepest fears and my deepest desires as a teenager and young adult. It isn’t a fully autobiographical novel for this very reason; reality and imagination are twisted in a sort of exploratory way.
It is ultimately a coming-of-age story about mental health through the eyes of a self-victimizing young anti-hero who finds a way to save himself by developing acceptance and responsibility.
“After being expelled from the Liceo (Italian High School) Nicholas Durán, tough, alcoholic, anger filled, thrill-seeking, self-destructive teenage poet, leaves home to start a journey in Beat Generation style, through Italy, the UK, and the US where he was raised in the Bronx, looking for revenge against the boogie men of his past that made him a monster, his childhood babysitter, his father whom he never met, and ultimately himself, within a society that struggles to help young ones in need.”
I am currently workshopping the screenplay version of the novel.
Imagine a “Moonlight”, “Filth” and “The Master” hybrid directed by Gus Van Sant!
Does studying/being a psychologist help you in some way when preparing for a role? How do you use that when it comes to acting?
For sure, my background in psychology serves me immensely in the preparation phase. In a certain way, many scene study classes are kind of broad, applied, “intro to psychology” classes.
Sitting down with a play or script and asking questions: “what does my character want?”, “what is his motivation?”, “how can he get what he wants?”, “what stands in the way of his objective?”, is pretty much what a psychotherapist asks their clients in a CBT session.
But acting also needs a lot of spontaneity which can be quite “irrational” and beyond any sort of preparation. You are the psychologist in the prep phase, and the client in the execution phase; that’s one way to look at it.
You mentioned that you’ve always been interested in working with suicidal people, would you ever consider portraying a character that was suicidal? How would you prepare to be in the mind of someone like that?
Yeah earlier last year I worked as a suicide prevention hotline volunteer. At first, I just wanted to gain clinical experience so I could enroll in graduate school. But in the end, I learned more than expected.
I would definitely play a character who is suicidal, although I might have already. We don’t really know what happened to the character I played in your film “Decembers Came And Went”. It is an option the audience might have imagined.
If I had to prepare to play a suicidal person I would investigate the given circumstances of the character looking for leads. A common theme among suicidal people is “lack of connection”: to others, to themselves. When you talk to people who are suicidal the theme of isolation comes up, “not being understood by others”, a lingering feeling of depression.
Another thing to question is: “what is their suicide risk level?”. It might seem obvious but “access to means” is a crucial variable when it comes to an impulsive act such as suicide: what is their access to medicines, firearms, large bodies of water, tall buildings, etc…
Do you see yourself becoming an actor that will be memorable for years to come?
All I know is I want to be proud of myself, my work, and especially be USEFUL. My goal is self discovery through the work, growth as an actor and human, and to shift audiences’ perspectives. Like Cesar A. Cruz said: “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable”.
Has the role of Agent Sal De Leon in For: Lila changed you as a person?
It definitely changed me as an actor, so it changed me as a person too.
The character Sal De Leon in “For: Lila” is a man with a severe cardiac disease, so while playing him I had to be careful not to have him lose his temper, have him keep his emotions in check, even under the most stressful scenarios, so I have learned that there can be a lot of power in quietness and subtlety, especially on-camera.
The character’s condition forced me into a very “internal” performance, which is a great lesson in terms of reminding myself: DON’T ACT, don’t show your work, don’t wear your process on your sleeves, just play your actions in pursuit of your objective within the reality of your character and the given circumstances of the world of the story.
For Lila, Directed by Malik Myers Coming soon ..
https://m.imdb.com/name/nm10378671/
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt32333098/?ref_=nm_flmg_job_1_unrel_t_3
