Benedetta Porcaroli’s career is becoming increasingly international After Il Gattopardo, the actress joins the cast of another Netflix series, the second season of The Gentlemen

It was with the award for Best Actress in the Orizzonti section that Benedetta Porcaroli left the Venice Film Festival last year. Her acceptance speech was full of awareness and humanity, as she dedicated the award to the “friends of the Flotilla”. She had won it for her performance in Il rapimento di Arabella, a tragicomic portrait of a young woman dealing with grief. It was not Porcaroli’s first time at the festival, nor was it for director Carolina Cavalli, with whom she had presented the filmmaker’s debut, Amanda, in the same competitive section in 2022. Both return for Venice 83, with Cavalli serving as president of the jury for the Luigi De Laurentiis Award for Best First Feature, while her actress returns as the Italian ambassador for Campari, the internationally renowned brand that has long brought Italian style to audiences around the world.

From Venice to London: Benedetta Porcaroli's present

Campari has been a loyal partner of the Venice Film Festival for years, and once again this year the brand invited several personalities to share a moment with the public through a series of masterclasses. Porcaroli was one of them, flying from London to the Lido after the premiere of the second season of The Gentlemen on Netflix, which she joined alongside two other Italian actors, Sergio Castellitto and Michele Morrone. This is not the actress’s first international production, but it does mark her debut working abroad. “With Immaculate, the horror film by Michael Mohan, we shot in Rome. It was an American movie, but I still felt at home. I also had a small part, and all I had to do was try to deliver my lines well. The Gentlemen was a more intense experience. Most of the filming took place in England, and then we moved towards Lake Maggiore. But the biggest challenge was keeping up with Guy Ritchie’s pace, a director who can change your lines on the very same day you are supposed to shoot.”

What an Italian actress brings to Guy Ritchie’s world

The experience of The Gentlemen meant plenty of dinners with the English cast and their famously tight accents, as well as being immersed in a welcoming atmosphere that made the work feel lighter, despite how demanding it was. But what did these three Italian actors bring to such a codified and distinctly British world as the one created by Ritchie? “I think we introduced a splash of colour into the English establishment portrayed in the series. The Gentlemen focuses on a very specific kind of aristocracy, one that barely exists anymore, and we painted it with our own noise. It worked really well with the energy of the rest of the English cast. We felt welcomed, which allowed us to play around a lot.”

Benedetta Porcaroli and Il Gattopardo

The Gentlemen is not Benedetta Porcaroli’s first role in a Netflix series. In 2025, the platform launched its adaptation of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s Il Gattopardo, turning the classic novel into a series following Luchino Visconti’s iconic 1963 film. The actress played Concetta Corbera di Salina, daughter of the story’s central figure, Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina. The production required an extraordinary amount of work in terms of historical reconstruction, with the sets and, above all, the costumes playing a fundamental role in immersing the characters in the time machine created by Netflix. “I have to say that costumes really help me get into a project. I am self-taught, so I don’t have a real technical approach to preparing for a character. Imagining myself in the clothes of the person I have to play helps me a lot. It allows the character to settle inside me, so that I can then react spontaneously. It is one of the difficult parts of the job because you still have to play with activating your emotions, and figuring out how to do that. But then, when I am in my trailer, dressed and looking at myself in the mirror, that’s when I really see the person I have to portray.”

From Nicole Kidman’s hat to fifty costumes

For Il Gattopardo, Porcaroli also had access to some genuine collector’s pieces. “It wasn’t just that I wanted to cry because I had fifty custom-made dresses, but one day they gave me a little hat for a scene. I looked at the label and it said it had belonged to Nicole Kidman.” Being the professional she is, Porcaroli did not steal the hat once worn by the Australian actress. She also revealed which scenes had put her most out of her comfort zone. “I’m terrible at dancing. A disaster. When we shot the sequences for Il Gattopardo, I was terrified of the final result.”

Growing up, slowing down, choosing better

If travelling is Benedetta Porcaroli’s way of relaxing, turning thirty has also helped her put things into a calmer perspective, both personally and professionally. “I realised that it’s not important to only do big things. Small things are fine too, especially when they come at the right time. It’s easy in a job like this, which can take you very high, to be forgotten quickly. That pushes you to keep reaching higher, to try to go further. Now, though, I realise that it’s not about climbing, but about planting seeds little by little. If you are lucky enough to have a long career, you can even let a few years pass before taking on another major role, choosing instead projects you genuinely want to do and believe in. “And of course, I’m saying this even though I get equally anxious whether something good or something bad happens to me. But I’m growing, and with that I’m trying to become more aware.”

A future between Venice and international cinema

A journey that continues to bring Benedetta Porcaroli to Venice, and hopefully this will not be the last time we see her among the festival’s protagonists. Perhaps she will return in a future film by Carolina Cavalli. “It’s wonderful to come back to an event like the Venice Film Festival every time. In a global moment like the one we are living through, it is important to stop for a second and appreciate the beautiful things. Amanda was an act of trust, which was then repeated with Il rapimento di Arabella. It is a beautiful collaboration that I carry with me deeply.”