As a child, Camila Morrone (Los Angeles, 28 years old) was puzzled when she heard her mother and father arguing and repeating the same phrases over and over again in the living room of their house. Later, she understood that her parents’ profession — both actors — required many hours of preparation, rehearsing lines, practicing scripts, and attending auditions that did not always have the expected outcome. The actress has said that she came to feel some rejection during her adolescence towards the world of acting, although deep down she knew that was also her path to follow.
Read more Discomfort over pilgrim camps in public schools in Madrid during the Pope’s visit
This year is possibly the most important of her career due to the impact and reception her work is having. Her performance in the Netflix miniseries Something Terrible Is About to Happen, a horror fiction directed by the very young Haley Z. Boston and co-starring alongside Adam Di Marco (The White Lotus), has received such good reviews that the specialized press already sees her as a possible Emmy nominee. If so, it would be her second nomination; the first was in 2023 for her role as Camila Dunne in Daisy Jones and the Six. With her new series, the demanding horror genre audience has responded very positively. According to platform data, it ranked among the most-watched content in the United States days after its release.
This is the first project produced by the Duffer brothers after the Stranger Things phenomenon. The actress told Deadline that although the filming was tough, her rapport with her co-star made it very bearable: “I will remember this forever. We had many inside jokes. We were so exhausted filming night horror scenes in the middle of the Canadian winter that we had to make each other laugh because it was too painful.” In a talk with The Hollywood Reporter last April, Morrone described the series as “the best version of an indie horror movie with the grandeur of a big-budget Netflix series.” And precisely between those two worlds — independent cinema and major platforms — she moves like a fish in water.
View this post on Instagram
Argentine origin and connection with Al Pacino
This is not the only project this Californian of Argentine origin can boast about. Morrone is part of the second season of The Night Manager, a Prime Video series released in January and a continuation of a first season aired in 2016 based on the work of John Le Carré. That first season was one of the year’s big successes, and its three main protagonists (Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie, and Olivia Colman) took home the Golden Globe. In the second installment, the plot moves to Colombia, with Hiddleston leading the cast. Joining the Briton are Diego Calva as Teddy Dos Santos, an arms dealer, and Morrone as Roxana Bolaños, a key character in the spy thriller. She has only praise for the series and has found in this role the opportunity to speak both English and Spanish, something new in her acting career: “I am Argentine and had never had the chance to play a character who spoke both languages. It was exciting to share that part of my personal life because it is an important part of who I am,” she said in an interview during the promotion. The new episodes have been well received, and although a third season is not confirmed yet, the actress would be delighted to participate in it: “Call me for season 3, okay?” she joked when asked about it.
Her Argentine roots come from both her father, actor Máximo Morrone, and her mother, actress Lucila Polak. From them, she inherited the interest in the acting profession, of which she has also experienced the hardest part: “I used to accompany my parents to castings and wait in the room after school,” she said in 2023 in an interview for Interview magazine conducted by Riley Keough, her co-star in Daisy Jones and the Six. That atypical childhood for any child, but not so strange in the hills of Los Angeles, changed when her parents separated in 2006. Two years later, her mother began a decade-long relationship with Al Pacino, with whom Morrone was raised for years and whom she describes as “the Messi of our industry,” a football metaphor that reveals her Argentine blood. In The Times, she referred to him as “a father figure,” although “not technically my stepfather.” “I am very lucky to have met him and been raised in his presence,” she added.
Indie cinema and Netflix: a career in progress
To these two premieres, another interesting project on the horizon is added. A seven-month shoot of the new adaptation of The Age of Innocence has just finished in Prague. Edith Wharton’s novel will soon arrive on Netflix in series format, with Morrone as Countess Ellen Olenska. The success of the 1993 film based on the book and directed by Martin Scorsese (with Michelle Pfeiffer in the role Morrone will now play) has generated great expectations about this new version, for which no release date is known yet. According to what has been revealed, the plot will focus on the love triangle, but the actress has not given many clues beyond how “incredible” the costumes and set are.
After many years with her name linked to her relationship with Leonardo DiCaprio, with whom she dated for five years until 2022, Morrone has earned the respect of critics with her latest projects. Now her name headlines for her work and not for her personal life. The actress’s filmography, steady but without that jumble of back-to-back titles that repeats in some young careers, stands out for independent films directed by women. In recent years, we have seen her in Never Goin’ Back (2018), directed by Augustine Frizzell, in Bear with Me (2019), by Annabelle Attanasio, or in Patricia Arquette’s directorial debut, the film Gonzo Girl (2023), where she shared the screen with Willem Dafoe and Arquette herself. Whether in independent films or in multi-million dollar budget series, Morrone has a rule when choosing a project, according to what she told Net-a-Porter: “When a job comes up, I think: ‘Is this easy for me? Could I do it with my eyes closed?’ If so, then it’s not the right job.”
Read more A religious order owns 47 properties obtained through donations in the heart of Madrid
