Gala Martinucci has mastered the art of stillness.One can picture her like a heron hunting at night in dark waters—silent, calm, a placid form making the merest ripples in the mirrored expanse. But it’s not fish that Martinucci catches; no, an actress like her gathers information. It’s simply essential when one’s trade constantly grapples with the human condition. 

“I think my most profound lessons come from simply standing still in crowded places and watching people,” she says. “I can spend hours just observing how strangers move, how they hide their emotions, or the way their energy changes when they think no one is looking.”

Born into a legacy of art—the child of a fashion designer and photography director and the grandchild of a costume designer—Martinucci has been creatively shaped by a variety of things besides people-watching and the expressive environment of her home life. She finds inspiration in The NeverEnding Story, Shakespeare, and anything involving magical realism, “where the mundane and the extraordinary coexist,” she asserts. The real catalyst to her acting career, however, came much earlier in her life, when she was still swirling in the currents of childhood. When she was 12, Martinucci saw Pride and Prejudice for the first time, which she describes as a “total turning point” for her. Like so many other young women, she was immediately taken with Mr. Darcy, but her interest didn’t lie in his classically handsome appearance or the love story he was swept up in. Instead, it had everything to do with Darcy as a soul—his vulnerability, his internal suffering, his profound silent emotion. She resonated with it intensely. “I’ve carried that with me throughout my career,” she says. “It taught me that acting isn’t about ‘performing,’ but about feeling something so deeply that the audience has no choice but to feel it with you.”

Despite all the physical and sensory training she received throughout her classical acting education, the Italian actress still finds herself standing on the periphery, fascinated with watching her surroundings, absorbing what she sees into her acting practice and spinning it into pure emotion. Even at just 21 years of age, she’s cultivated an ability for dual outrospection and introspection that most people can’t obtain in an entire lifetime. Her penchant for observation is a good thing, too, considering the kind of roles she takes on. She’s constantly in competition with herself, excited by “narratives that dive deep into the complexities of human nature, the kind that don’t look for easy answers,” she says.

Her first leading role arrived last year with the release of Arsa, a short film in which she played a solitary young woman cobbling together an artistic world of her own on an island until newcomers disrupt her dreamy existence. 

While her next few roles won’t be getting any sunnier, Martinucci has a lot to look forward to. She recently wrapped filming on the science fiction film Urania, in which she plays the teenaged main character, Bianca, who gains the ability to rewrite history and slip into alternate realities as she faces coming to terms with the death of her father and the overwhelming grief that accompanied his loss. 

She also stars in director Valentina Bertuzzi’s upcoming Flower of Darkness, a film that is equal parts horror movie and coming-of-age story. “Audiences can expect a very intense experience,” she cautions. “It speaks to our contemporary moment by exploring the price of ambition. In a world where everyone is chasing visibility, the film shows that if you want success, and more importantly, if you want to maintain it, you have to make some deals.” Martinucci’s character, 17-year-old Lisa, finds herself guided by a dark hypnotic force that threatens to consume her even as it promises her everything she ever wanted. At the same time that her deepest desires are becoming reality, Lisa is tortured by visions that pull her into the liminal space that exists between the waking and dreaming realms. 

It’s the perfect project for an actress like Martinucci, one who not only never shies away from a difficult role, but actively seeks them out. If the world of acting is an arena, she will always be competing against herself, perpetually reaching for higher levels of technical excellence and deeper wells of emotion. “I love stories that feel visceral and raw, where the characters are pushed to their breaking points,” she says. “For me, the most interesting part of a story isn’t when things are going well, but when everything is falling apart and you finally see the truth of a person. I want to be part of projects that challenge both the actors and the audience to feel something real, even if it’s uncomfortable.”  

While the subject matter of a thriller like Flower of Darkness may have been a first for her, the actress didn’t have to stretch very far to connect with her character. Despite the age difference—Lisa teeters on the cusp of adulthood while Martinucci has already started down that long road—the actress felt that she already contained so much of the character inside herself. “[Lisa’s] a solitary human being, very pure and innocent, but also incredibly brave and instinctive,” Martinucci says. “The fact that she is an artist made everything easier, we share that same visceral way of looking at the world. I really relate to her sensitivity and her need for solitude.” Any other difference between them was surmountable; she simply stripped away the wisdom she’s accumulated over the years and cast herself back to the turmoils and vivid joys of being a teenage girl, once again becoming a young woman on the verge of discovering the wild, endless expanse of one’s life. 

Much like Lisa, Martinucci is “in the middle of becoming who [she] is.” And, like so many of us, she’s really only just begun. Young, beautiful, and keenly observant, she’s ready to be surprised and challenged, and achingly hungry for a future that teeters ever closer. “Right now, I’m like a sponge, absorbing every emotion, every role, and every encounter,” she says, and you better believe her. While she might like to stand still, her career almost certainly won’t. All those hours spent on the outside looking in—at the world, at others, at herself—is already transforming into something incredible, like straw spun into gold. So sit up, pay attention, and train your eyes on the ever-brightening light that is Gala Martinucci. Chances are, she’ll be looking right back. 

Photographed by Jason Hetherington

Styled by Katy Cutbirth

Written by Maddy Brown

Hair: Sofia Sjoo

Makeup: Reve Ryu

Flaunt Film: Jack Beere

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