Jasmine Trinca

The gaze Moretti found at a high school

Nanni Moretti walked the halls of the Virgilio high school in Rome, searching for a face that didn't exist yet. Jasmine Trinca was 18 years old, with archaeology books under her arm. She had no drama training and no interest in the spotlight. But the director of La stanza del figlio saw in her a composure unusual for her age.

That film won the Palme d'Or in 2001 and changed the course of a student who planned to spend her life among Roman ruins. Trinca didn't pursue success, because success ambushed her in a high school classroom.

Film chose her.

In 2003 she appeared in La meglio gioventù under the direction of Marco Tullio Giordana. It was six hours of footage telling the story of Italy through one family. She played Giorgia, a young woman with mental health issues who barely spoke. Her performance relied entirely on her eyes and on a physical restraint that moved the whole country.

Resisting the muse label

Many directors tried to typecast her as the fragile girl of art-house cinema. But she chose the risk of rawer productions. In 2005 she shot Romanzo Criminale with Michele Placido. There she played Roberta, the girlfriend of a criminal in a violent, dark Rome.

And the gamble paid off.

In 2009 she received the Marcello Mastroianni award at the Venice Film Festival for her work in Il grande sogno. By then she was a constant presence on international red carpets (though she always kept a low profile in the celebrity press). Trinca never moved to Hollywood or changed her residence in the Testaccio neighborhood.

The Body as a Political Tool

The year 2017 marked a technical turning point in her career. She starred in Fortunata, directed by Sergio Castellitto. To play this hairdresser from the outskirts of Rome, she had to change her physical appearance and the way she walked. She won the Un Certain Regard award at Cannes after a standing ovation that lasted several minutes.

Critics stopped seeing her as a promising newcomer and began treating her as an institution.

But acting wasn't enough to understand the mechanics of fiction. In 2020 she presented her first short film as a director, titled Being My Mom. It was a quiet piece inspired by her own mother and by walks through an empty Rome.

In 2022 she made the leap to feature films with Marcel!. In this film she drew on autobiographical elements to explore the relationship between an artist mother and her daughter. Alba Rohrwacher was the lead actress while Trinca stayed behind the monitor, controlling every frame.

Maturity and a Return to Myth

In 2021, she worked on Supereroi directed by Paolo Genovese. It was a commercial project that set out to explore how time affects modern couples. The film earned more than 3.5 million euros at the Italian box office despite the health restrictions of the time.

In 2024, her participation in the series The Leopard for Netflix was announced. She plays Stella Salina in this new adaptation of Tomasi di Lampedusa's novel. It's a high-budget production that aims to update the imagery Visconti established in classic cinema.

Jasmine Trinca lives in Rome with her daughter Elsa. In 2023 she was a member of the official jury at the 80th Venice International Film Festival, chaired by Damien Chazelle.