Pasquale Esposito
Pasquale Esposito's break came in the third season of Gomorrah, which in Italian screen work functions as a passport. He is an actor, writer and director, and he describes his approach to the craft in terms of Zen Buddhism, a practice rather than a technique, which is an unusual thing for a character actor to put on the record and suggests a fairly deliberate performer.
What the Gomorrah exposure bought him was the international circuit: the English-language productions that shoot in Italy or want Italian faces in them. He is Vincenzo Danioni across Hotel Portofino, Pucci in RIPLEY, and he took a small early part in the studio comedy When in Rome. Industry added a British and American credit to the same list.
That is a specific and slightly precarious niche. An Italian actor with English on his tongue and a face that reads as authority gets steady work from foreign producers and comparatively little of the material that would let him carry something. A Taste for Murder casts him as Commissario Curti, which suggests the next phase is the one Italian actors of a certain bearing all reach in the end, which is playing policemen.
Movies (1)
TV (3)
Where to start with Pasquale Esposito
RIPLEY first. Pucci is a small part, but that series gives small parts an unusual amount of air and it is by a distance the most carefully made thing on his list, so his few scenes are worth more here than a bigger role elsewhere.
Hotel Portofino is the larger commitment, Vincenzo Danioni across a period drama built for a patient audience, and it is where you can watch him work at length rather than in fragments. When in Rome is a bit part in a studio romantic comedy and a curiosity only. A Taste for Murder is the newest, casting him as a police commissario. His Gomorrah season and his Industry episodes are not among the credits listed here, which is a shame, since Gomorrah is where all of this came from.