Anitta

Larissa de Macedo Machado was born in Honório Gurgel, a humble suburb of Rio de Janeiro where the sewers overflowed every summer. She didn't start out in expensive academies or under the protection of artistic dynasties. She sang in the choir of the Santa Luzia church and taught herself English by reading old magazines she picked up on the street.

For the Brazilian music industry in 2010, a girl who blended Carioca funk with commercial pop was destined to last two summers. No one anticipated that behind the party-girl persona was a strategist obsessed with financial statements and distribution contracts.

She calculated every step with mathematical precision.

In 2013 she released Show das Poderosas. The black-and-white music video cost just a few thousand reais, yet it surpassed 100 million views on YouTube at a time when streaming in Brazil was still an experimental frontier. Anitta took over her own management after breaking with her first managers over financial irregularities, a move that was risky for most singers in their twenties.

She learned the basics of corporate marketing and began negotiating on equal terms with multinational record labels.

She studied the Spanish-speaking market phoneme by phoneme. She recorded with Maluma and J Balvin before the Anglo industry grasped the pull of urban music, sidestepping the language barriers that had always held Brazilian artists back beyond their borders. In 2022 her single Envolver reached the number one spot globally on digital platforms, a feat no solo artist from her country had achieved on their own.

The Audiovisual Assault and the Global Screen

Her move onto the screen was not the whim of a pop star. Anitta understood very early that audiovisual content was no longer just a promotional tool, but the true narrative catalyst for a public figure. In 2018 she co-produced the documentary series Vai Anitta for Netflix, which candidly showed the physical toll of tours and the inner workings of her business negotiations.

Two years later she doubled down with Anitta: Made in Honório in 2020. The cameras captured fits of rage in dressing rooms, technical glitches just before going on stage, and contract disputes behind closed doors.

She exposed the messy machinery of the business.

That absolute control over her own image paved the way for her move into traditional fiction. In 2020 she made her acting debut in the Brazilian telenovela Amor de Mãe, playing Sabrina, a supporting role but filmed under the relentless pace of TV Globo.

In 2023 Netflix's Spanish production house signed her for the seventh season of Elite. She played Jéssica, a self-defense teacher who shared dramatic scenes with Carmen Arrufat in the hallways of Las Encinas.

Critics doubted her ability to carry dramatic scenes outside of music videos. But the Brazilian star handled her scenes with composure and a physical control inherited from her choreography, far from the overacted mannerisms typical of singers' cameos.

Controlling the Master and the Camera

Animation came calling in 2024 with the British production Hitpig!. In this animated feature directed by David Feiss and Cinzia Angelini, she shared the voice cast with Peter Dinklage and RuPaul, voicing Letícia dos Anjos, a Brazilian animal rights activist. The project required weeks of English dubbing with strict lip-sync at studios in Montreal.

And the big screen was no mere distraction.

Through her company Rodamoinho Filmes, created to keep control of her audiovisual productions, she began financing outside projects and structuring film co-productions.

In 2026 she wrapped filming on the dystopian feature film Corrida dos Bichos, directed by Ernesto Solis and Rodrigo Pesavento for Prime Video. Set in a futuristic Rio de Janeiro ruled by underground betting mafias, she performed physical action scenes without stunt doubles in most of her shots.

The production contract stipulated thirteen weeks of filming under an exclusive on-set technical clause and a budget set at seven million dollars.