The daughter of the actor who died in 2013: 'I've always tried to understand where my father ends and where I begin'. She now she knows. Thanks to the striptease, the circus, the wrong loves. And to a former warehouse

Photo Video

Today they call them lofts. But when Giuliano Gemma set his eyes on this street plan in his Trastevere, it was a warehouse. In the 90s, the designer Sergio Morelli transformed it into a home-studio which, since then, has housed the memorabilia and passions of the most famous spaghetti-western actor of our cinema - Photo | video

Vera Gemma: 'I've had affairs with a couple of women, but then...' Vera Gemma: 'I've had affairs with a couple of women, but then...'

TEN YEARS WITHOUT “RINGO” – This year will be 10 years since Gemma died in a car accident. Since then, her daughter Vera has stopped driving. Another of the passages that in his life underpin a sort of existential negotiation with the much loved and cumbersome figure of him. A negotiation which also includes the fact that Vera bought this casket a few weeks ago in which her father displayed his cowboy spurs, his silver saddle, his guns and the bronze statues that he loved to make. A life-size Charlie Chaplin stands in the courtyard. «This is the house that most speaks of dad. It was her basis », says Vera, a long apprenticeship as an actress and director and known to the general public for her participation in the Island of the famous . «I could not accept it being sold and so I took over the shares of Giuliana and Baba ( his sister and his father's second wife , ed.). Dad would be proud. I often came to see him here in his last years. It was here that I told him I wanted to make a documentary about him. “But who cares?”, he replied. He was afraid of appearing self-referential.'

Asia Argento and Vera Gemma, show forbidden to minors: thus they meet (remotely) after Beijing Express - guard

What stage was your relationship with him? “Critical and important. After the documentary, I organized a presentation in Los Angeles with Quentin Tarantino and dad came, a beautiful week. At the airport, greeting me, he said 'Thank you for everything'. A round 'thank you', in which there was finally what I was looking for: to be accepted by him. It was the last time I saw him, he died shortly after. That documentary was my declaration of love before he left and it was the possibility for him to really get to know me».

How were your last years? “He wasn't worldly, he didn't take sides. In fact he was forgotten even before his death. His career and the prestige he gave to cinema deserved more respect. And he had let himself go a little, even though at 70 he was still somersaulting off the trampoline. But he said he was sure he would die before he got old enough to lose control of his body.'

Vera Gemma's dedication: 'To my wonderful father, Giuliano' - video

Do you mind being Gemma's daughter? «That of Gemma's daughter, who grew up on the sets of westerns, is my first life. There are others, lived chasing wrong dreams and loves: the period of the underground Roman theater, from 16 to 25 years old. Paris, where I fled after my mother's death. Then Los Angeles. I have always looked for ways to express myself and there I did it by undressing. It was the 90s, striptease clubs were beautiful, undressing was a form of entertainment, a real job. I started by accident, the first day I earned $ 450. I became famous, I was the only one working under my real name, but no one ever related me to dad».

Why did he stop then? “It can be an experience of life, not life. I had met the man who would become my son's father. After Maximus was born I tried to go back to undressing, but I was different, I had become a mother. Then I returned to Rome. I started working on a documentary about the circus, which I knew well because Dad trained there for his films. I wanted to tell the new generation of circus performers and I ended up engaged to a tamer and started working with tigers and lions. I ride with them in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine. With son in tow.'

Vera Gemma returns to the super skintight playsuit – video

What do you remember about Ukraine? 'A wonderful place, they think highly of the circus, people dress up to go there. The circus period took me away from the world of cinema but it was there that I met the director Tizza Covi. We became friends and in the end, when she offered me a film inspired by my story, I trusted completely ».

Vera was born, for which she won the Lion for Best Actress in the Horizons section at the last Venice Film Festival. Were you expecting it? «When they said my name everything found meaning in my life, because everything had brought me there: the wrong loves, the circus, violence, drugs, striptease. Everything comes when it has to.'

Vera Gemma debuts at the Venice Film Festival: 'Don't send me dad' - video

And now what does it do? «I have some proposals for the TV. For Italian cinema I am the trash one despite the Lion. But an Austrian director, David Wagner, wants me to star in the remake of my father's spaghetti western».

Her existential escapes always bring her back to him. «I have never run away, I have followed life, to understand where my father ended and where I began. And now in this house, which is mine, are my portraits beside his spurs.'

Source: oggi.it