Of
Candida Morvillo
The actress and model: «Checco is actually shy. The success of “Buen Camino”? We are saturated with wars and problems”
Three and a half million Italians have already seen Martina Colombari in «Buen Camino» with Checco Zalone: ugly, aged, with gray hair.
Reactions?
«That no one recognizes me. Nobody. They have to wait until the second or third scene to realize it’s me. I have little make-up, big glasses, gray hair. Which in reality isn’t an ugly thing, I’m just a woman who has decided to leave the world of the jet set who lived with her ex-husband, Checco. My Linda fell in love with a Palestinian director-writer and, from a former model, she became a busy theater actress and also has a metamorphosis in her appearance.”
What was your reaction when you saw yourself transformed into Linda: laughter, shock, relief?
«I said: how cool! But when Zalone and director Gennaro Nunziante told me what I would become, I didn’t hesitate for a moment. I was so happy to be able to play with my beauty. Then, it is always difficult to address these issues, because they are misunderstood. I was born with a beauty pageant and I built a career on that. I have always carried beauty with me, I have always exploited it and I have also protected it. But on social media I was attacked for a thousand reasons, because I was too thin, because a Dancing with the stars I talked about my menopause, because if they see you doing sports they think it’s vanity, while I want to keep fit now that I’m 50, so I can be active and clear-headed at 90.”
Linda is dealing with the crisis of her teenage daughter who runs away towards the Camino de Santiago. And just this year, in real life, his son Achille talked about his periods of crisis and his problems with ADHD, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder: did you read this coincidence as a coincidence, a destiny, a sign?
«When they told me that in the script I had to report my daughter’s disappearance, I immediately thought of the time when Achille also didn’t return home. So yes: I was involved. Having said that: kids today have great difficulty finding their identity, understanding who they are and what they want. We parents take our responsibility, but the world they find is not that of our adolescence: it is demanding, high-performance, very fast. And social media tells him something that is not reality. Then, I’m not against social media: they are a medium. Ironically, this film came from a message from the casting manager on Instagram.”
How did it go with Zalone and Nunziante? What advice did they give you?
«They are very much about acting by sensation, by improvisation. There were several rehearsals before the take, but not so much on how to say the line, but on comic timing, reactions, body attitude. Luca Medici, stage name of Checco Zalone, is exactly how you see him in the movies. Then, off set, you perceive that he is shy, but he always tries to make you feel comfortable. We had many dinners together during the preparation of the film: it’s nice to find normal people in our world.”
At what point on set did you laugh really hard?
«For one of the harshest jokes that Checco makes, about my partner: “He is the only Palestinian who occupies a territory, my gaza”. Coming from him, it’s hilarious: at the premiere, the cinema went down laughing.”
This film is the most watched ever as a box office debut at Christmas. Why do Italians like it so much?
«Because we are saturated: wars, problems, work… Watching this film, you can think of nothing. And in my opinion, we need to take back our lives a little: go back to doing what is good for us, not just what we “should”. I stopped going to dinners just “because I have to”, I prefer to focus on the connections that matter.”
Is she ready for a metamorphosis like Linda?
«If until two or three years ago I didn’t go out without makeup and perfect hair, now I open the beauty shop once a week. If I work, makeup is my uniform, I’ll do it in February Friday 13tha theater comedy by Jean-Pierre Martinez, and in April I will even be an android at the cinema Truer than truthbut in life I can go out wearing seven colors and I don’t care. It’s not that that Martina is no longer there: there is a different one, the one who goes to a meditation retreat, comes back and says to herself “I took care of myself””.
December 30, 2025
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