Forget Brad Pitt! Pierfrancesco Favino, star of Giorni e Nuvole and L’Ultimo Bacio is in the new Brad Pitt movie, World War Z.
Yesterday my husband dragged me to the new Brad Pitt movie, World War Z, and thank God I took my eyes off the floor for a few minutes and noticed that one of my favorite actors, Pierfrancesco Favino, is in it! Zombie movies aren’t my thing, and this zombie movie is gross as they come, but seeing an Italian actor in it made it all worth while. Favino plays a doctor for the World Health Organization who is holed up in a clinic and trying to figure out what is causing the whole zombie outbreak. He’s just great in the role, playing the action packed scenes with subtlety and still keeping the tension alive.
I found a wonderful interview with Favino on Leggo, by Michela Greco, and I’ve translated it from the Italian:
He’s 43 and has 38 films under his belt, Pierfrancesco Favino is Italy’s most loved actor by Hollywood, having started acting in American films in 2006 with Night At The Museum and is now on the screen with Brad Pitt in Marc Forster’s zombie movie World War Z. In the US, the film has already made 66 million dollars and will arrive in our theaters on June 27. Favino, who shows up on the screen in the last half hour of this apocalyptic horror film, plays a doctor from the World Health Organization, barricaded in a laboratory in which the study for destroying the undead. Soon, we’ll see him in the role of racecar driver Clay Regazzoni in Ron Howard’s film, Rush.
How did you end up on this amazing movie set?
In reality they were looking for a French actor but I auditioned anyway. I guess I convinced them.
What did you like the best about World War Z?
The fact that it’s a film of impact, fun but with a sence of suffocating aggression. And that, like every zombie movie, there’s a hidden political message: I liked the idea of globalization and the references to overpopulation.
How did it go with Brad Pitt?
It was better than I’d thought it would be, when they said to me, “oh, and Brad Pitt’s in it too”; I learned that he’s human like us. It seemed to me that being a father is the most important thing to him and it touched me to see his children arrive on the set; he’s really a family man. He’s like that in the film, too, and it works, when it could have seemed hyperbolic.
You’re one of the few Italians to make it to Hollywood; what do you have that got you on their sets?
I try to bring “being Italian” away from the clichés and to avoid doing the mafia or the corrupt politician thing…but if tomorrow Scorsese knocked on my door, pretend that I never said that…(laughing).
Do you feel a little bit of a responsibility representing us?
I’m happy that thanks to me people realize that there’s great professionalism, but not to the point of waving the Italian flag on the set.
I Love Italian Everything 