Yesterday she took the Ariston stage without going down the famous stairs, at least at the beginning: «Mr Ama, I’m a simple person, I come from the province of Florence, from Campi Bisenzio and I don’t feel like going down the stairs, if anything. .. I would like to climb them». As Clare Franciniborn in the late seventies, always retains a bit of mystery about the precise date, she made her debut at the Sanremo Festival as co-host alongside Amadeus and Gianni Morandi.
Ironic and brilliant, with a distinctly Tuscan accent, Yesterday Francini gave a long monologue on motherhood and its difficulty in having children. There comes a moment in life when it is clear that you have grown up: when you have a child – the actress began -. Now, Chiara, I don’t have a son, but I think it’s something after which it’s clear you won’t be as young as you were at sixteen, with a moped, a disco and high school. And there comes a time in life when everyone around you starts to calve. It’s an avalanche.” In his words also the pain and fear of failure.
But who is Chiara Francini? The actress and writer was born in Campi Bisenzio, in the province of Florence, a province that Chiara has in her heart and always claims: from her mother (also greeted several times from the Ariston stage) to her grandmother (“Orlanda Furiosa”), at first sixteen-year-old boyfriend: «He was a worker. But deep down in Campi in the 1990s you either studied or you were a worker. Then there was Lorenzo, also a worker. With directors and actors never even a one night stand, heterosexual male actors then, my goodness, they are the people who horrify me the most in the world. How egotistical, chilling, fragile. They have no charm for me.”
Chiara Francini is now engaged to Frederick Lundqvist, Swedish. «I like his Nordic humor too, it is very similar to Tuscan sarcasm. But he’s obsessed with skiing and we girls from Campi don’t even know what snow is like.”
What was Chiara like as a child?
“A big pain in the ass. I grew up with my grandparents, I took my wicker chair and went to the garden surrounded by all these sixty-year-olds who were my playmates, my grandparents and their neighbours. Maybe that’s why I’m a living chiasmus: very modern, because I come from two very matriarchal families, and on the other hand very traditional. My grandmother was very ingenious and wise despite having only done the eighth grade, and she gave me good rules ».
«My life is like a basket in which I have put, like at the market, all the delicacies I enjoy, I see it a bit as a reward for what I sow. The market metaphor is not accidental, for me shopping is a moment of great joy, eating and convivial aspects are a saving moment of evolution and progression. In fact, my prize when I lived with my grandparents was food. The market reminds me of the carnality of life, which always resembles bread and oil. Bread with oil rejoices the eye, the belly and the life».
Which men do you like, and which ones do you like?
«I like men who remind me of my father, but if they ask me what my sign is, they give me fulminant alopecia. I like the craftsmen of feeling, the melancholic and taciturn. Not the chatterboxes.”
How did you discover the theater?
“My favorite cartoon was Maya, and it was about a girl who wanted to be an actress. In elementary school, at the Fra Ristoro school, they asked me to sing La Santa Caterina and my mother came – one of the rare times – to see the show. In the scene where she gets killed, I threw myself off the stage with a big splash and everyone thought I really hurt myself, it was a very believable fall obviously. Then as an adult with my friend Elena to see Titanic at the cinema, I said to her: one day I will be on the screen too. I wanted to send my photos to Cioé but my father, who worked at the post office, didn’t want to. Then, growing up, I entered the theater school of the Limonaia di Sesto with Barbara Nativi and was chosen to represent Noccioline by Fausto Paravidino, the show was commissioned by the National Theater in London. I spent four beautiful years at the Limonaia: it was my bread with oil, my dream».
Does popularity make you happy?
«More to be loved. I am always the one who must make father and mother proud».
February 11, 2023
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