Matilda de Angelis

Gisteravond naar de ontknoping van “The undoing” gekeken, een Amerikaanse zesdelige miniserie, geschreven door David E. Kelley en geregisseerd door Susanne Bier. Het is een verfilming van de roman You Should Have Known van schrijfster Jean Hanff Korelitz. De hoofdrollen worden vertolkt door Nicole Kidman en Hugh Grant, maar laten we er geen doekjes om winden: de voornaamste scène was de naaktscène van de Italiaanse Matilda de Angelis.

Naar het schijnt was Nicole Kidman evenzeer uit haar lood geslagen als de doorsnee-kijker, want de naaktscène was hoegenaamd niet gepland. Dat lijkt de manier van werken van Susanne Bier te zijn. “Full nudity was not foreseen, but it was functional to the scene. If the woman in front of you is completely naked, an inch from your face, then you perceive her as threatening,” De Angelis explained. When asked during an interview how she approached filming her totally nude locker room scene with Nicole Kidman and if she was uncomfortable doing it, Matilda De Angelis said: “Not really. Whether it’s my eyes, or my mouth, or my boobs or my vagina, my body is just another tool to express myself. It’s still me. As long as the goal is to communicate something complex, then nakedness can be a powerful way to express and persuade. (…) It’s not the first time that I found myself in these kinds of scenes and situations. Four years ago, I did hard work with a coach to overcome these boundaries that we have towards nudity sometimes, which is mainly the most natural thing in the world. But it’s something that we learned to be ashamed of or [consider as] something really weird. But if you start thinking about nudity and about your body as a tool to express yourself and express emotions, suddenly nudity is not that big a deal anymore. And it’s actually liberating. I’ve learned how to be even more proud and even more bold and even more confident while naked.” (IMDb)

Matilda De Angelis (born Bologna 11 September 1995) is an Italian actress and singer. Her credits include the films Italian Race and Rose Island, and the television miniseries The Law According to Lidia Poët and The Undoing.

She started playing guitar and violin at the age of thirteen. In 2011, De Angelis began singing in the band Rumba de Bodas. The band also recorded an album, Karnaval Fou, which was released in 2014.

In 2015, she was noticed by director Matteo Rovere, who cast her as the lead in his film Italian Race (2016). According to De Angelis, Rovere « saw some of my pictures on Facebook and he wanted to meet me because they were searching for the leading role in this new film and the director didn’t want to get a professional actress because he needed a specific dialect from a specific region in Italy (Emilia Romagna). So, I went to the audition and after, he told me: “You have to do it again, but with a script” and I had three or four auditions after that and then, I got the part ». For her debut role, De Angelis was nominated at 2017 David di Donatello for Best Actress; she also wrote and sang the film’s song “Seventeen”, which received a nomination for Best Original Song at the same competition. She was also awarded with a Flaiano Prize and a Nastro d’argento for the Best Newcomer.

In 2017, she played the role of Brittia in the ensemble comedy film The Prize by Alessandro Gassmann. In 2018, she starred in the drama film Youtopia, where she played a teenage girl selling her virginity online in order to save her family. In 2020, she was in the main cast of the HBO’s television miniseries The Undoing and starred in the Netflix’s original film Rose Island, directed by Sydney Sibilia. For her role in Rose Island she was awarded with the David di Donatello for Best Supporting Actress.

She co-hosted the first evening of the Sanremo Festival 2021 alongside Amadeus. She stars alongside Liev Schreiber in the film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s novel with the same name Across the River and into the Trees. And last but not least (although I find it strange to be included in a Wikipedia-stub): she is an atheist. (Wikipedia)