Born in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in a hospital in front of Quinta da Boavista in the neighborhood of São Cristovão. I am the daughter of a really great couple: Felippe and Elizabeth. She is beautiful, naturally elegant, and a lawyer. He is good looking, as well as an enterprising and kind soul who always takes his time to talk to everybody he encounters, and an engineer. Seven years before my arrival they were blessed with Gisela, my sister. A real fighter, mother of Gabriela and wife to the brother I never had Duda. These are my family members, my friends and the ones who encourage me.
I was born from people who have a unique characteristic: a passion for building life. Within our story there aren’t many ups and downs, for we were raised to pick up where we left off and keep on going regardless of the kind of difficulty we would come across.. My childhood was enjoyed in the neighborhood of Rio Comprido , as a teenager I spent my days in Barra da Tijuca and my adult years are being enjoyed moving from place to place, wherever the theater might take me!!!!!!
The cool thing during my childhood was to come up with shows on our balcony to show myself off. Well, my childhood is laid out in the play: Up close she ain’t normal ( De perto, ela não é normal ) that’s why I’ll go straight to my teenage years: a mixture of beach, bicycles and many great attempts of becoming a body board surfer. All in vain ,for each day in the ocean that went by, would always end up in some kind of embarrassment. My biggest worry was to manage to get rid of the girlish face so that I’d get in the night clubs, another failure.The girlish face only got worse as I pounded on the make up, so, I waited for my eighteen years to come along to throw myself into the night clubs, Papillon, Ritmo, Zoom etc.
My high school was done at Pedro II. Everyday I went off to school wearing my pleated skirt, doll shoes and white blouse (VERY WELL IRONED) to an upper middle class school with a strict disciplinary ideology where some things were still taught, such as: Latin, Philosophy and Music.
At this time I dedicated myself to the Rhythmic gymnastics team, which I took part in, trained for daily after class and even became the city junior champ ( yeah !!!! ). It was all about training and studying at this time.
At the age of 15, I told my folks: Mom and Dad, remember when I was a child I always said I would be an actress ¿ Well I believe the time to start has come. The following year came with the introduction to the stage, in Professor João Brandão’s class and the goodbye to gymnastics was eminent. That was it, I had never felt so carefree and comfortable in any other place. The discovery of the world of make believe, my world or better yet, of me, had begun.
So it was and so it has been!!!!!!
My first professional play was Julieta or the key of dreams, by George Neveaux ,( Julieta ou a chave dos sonhos) and then Danced on the curves, ( Bailei na Curva ) directed by my good friend Felipe Camargo.Soon after I did On the shores of the open ocean, ( A beira do mar aberto ) by Caio Fernandes and then I did a Soap Opera called Tocaia Grande, written by Jorge Amado.It was first directed by Regis Cardoso and then by Walter Avancini, on the extinct Manchete Network. Both have since passed leaving a legacy behind, showing their enormous talent.
One job went by after the other by the time I reached the age of nineteen,when I traveled to Europe and felt the need to study, to understand what I was doing, what was this new world about. So I then had classes with a giant, the actress Camila Amado,where I stayed for a few years. Interpretation, dramaturgy, philosophy., Camilla’s house exhaled art and I wanted to take it all in!!!
There I began to write and to produce theater. Sometime after I enrolled for my philosophy class at PUC University. Five years went by, and all I did was to read, write, try to understand, rehearse, and produce plays (ones that I believed in and thought had something to say). A huge mix of art, thought and theatrical experiments. Exercising the possibilities, taking chances, getting it right, getting it wrong, winning and losing. I was happening!!!!!! At 25, graduation!!! I majored in philosophy, end of the student era.
Five years came to an end, after countless plays and productions, a musical came along, and there I was, learning how to sing!!!!
I was some what more aware of what I wanted artistically. The big thing of this period of my life was that I kept writing and I believed it was worth it.
Then it happened , something new had come along:Up close she ain’t normal (De perto, ela não é normal).First the text hit me, then the courage to read it out loud and finally the preparation to do it.The arrival of Flavio Rocha to direct the play and Ellen Millet to direct the art left me speechless. I was set with wonderful professionals who believed in my text. (Uau)!!!!
The first experience with my own text in stand up comedy came with an invitation to work in Toilete (a Walcyr Carrasco play, having Cininha de Paula as director) where I learned the genre with Claudio Torres Gonzaga,as well as columns, tales and so on.When I noticed I was writing just about everyday, and the disbelief or better yet the embarrassment of what I had written, slowly started to go away because there was an audience to hear me out and give credit to the work that was being done.For it is for them, it is to them that I speak. I love to see the many faces in the audience reacting, on the spot as the story unravels. There was this actress who now felt confident to risk it with a larger audience: the television and cinema audience.
Here I am, whole, present, committed, and very alive!!!! Ready to live another five, ten or twenty years, of whatever phase intertwined with art life may have reserved for me.
