The face, for Maurizio Lombardi, seems to be a temporary domicile. You live there for as long as necessary, then you change address. Maybe with a prosthesis, a wig, a different nose, an unexpected posture. Not to hide, but to perform that little secular miracle we call acting: stop being yourself for a few hours and give your body to someone else.
So it is not surprising that in Dio Laughs, the film by Giovanni Veronesi presented in Venice 83, Lombardi plays Fra Monaldo, a disturbing and deformed friar who belongs to the shadiest area of a story set in the seventeenth century. At the center is Fra Leopoldo, played by Pierfrancesco Favino, preacher of a God close to men and even capable of laughing; alongside him, among others, Silvio Orlando, Alma Noce, Francesco Gheghi, Paolo Rossi and Carlo Cecchi in the role of Pope Innocent
We met Lombardi at the Lido. What emerged was a conversation that started with a friar and went much further: to the pleasure of masks, to the dignity of the character actor, to Paolo Sorrentino, Mario Monicelli and Stanley Kubrick, to the desire to go behind the camera and to a Venice experienced as a medicine. Above all, to the praise of imperfection. Because, says the actor, "a dress when it's wrong is elegant."
God laughs, Fra Monaldo and the pleasure of deformation
In God laughs your part is not huge, but Fra Monaldo remains imprinted. Also thanks to the prosthetic work. How did you build the character with Giovanni Veronesi?
«Giovanni absolutely wanted me in the cast. When a director gets along well with an actor, something obviously remains. He immediately told me that it wasn't a huge part, but that he needed an artisan actor, with temperament, who could give it depth.
When Monaldo proposed to me we started having fun and breaking the bank a bit. I told him: "Giovanni, I have made many friars, priests and cardinals. Let's have fun, since we are in the seventeenth century and in a convent." He had the intuition to work on deformation, almost on the representation of evil, and we began to carry out prosthetic tests.
I love all this. I think of Gary Oldman in Darkest Hour, of Tootsie, of Mrs. Doubtfire. If I can give myself some credit, I think I absorb prosthetic makeup well: I don't wear it, I store it. It's something that I would like to see much more of in Italian cinema too."
In-depth analysis
God Rides, Giovanni Veronesi's film out of competition in Venice
«A laughing child is like God when he laughs»
The title of the film itself contains almost a provocation. Can laughing at God, or imagining God laughing, still be a transgressive gesture?
«Laughter is a great mystery. Like love. Laughing, falling in love and making art are perhaps the three most mysterious things in the world and, paradoxically, also the simplest.
The problem is precisely this: simplicity is not easy to achieve. Chaplin said it's the most difficult thing.
How beautiful is it to be in love and laugh? How beautiful is it, when you act, to be able to make the audience laugh and hear the sound of their laughter? A laughing child is like God when he laughs"
The character actor as a traveler among emotions
You have played very different characters. How much is there necessity and how much choice in your versatility?
«At the beginning there was also a question of survival. If you don't start out as a boy being the protagonist, you learn to work on every opportunity. They give you a few frames and you try to work it as much as possible, perhaps with a gesture, an idea, a moment.
But I am also deeply in love with the word “characteristic”. I like it because it means being able to travel into the world of emotions. It's like being a great traveler: you start from Vietnam, pass through Singapore, Mexico, then maybe you arrive in Canada.
I would like to do this with emotions, not always stay in the same place. And this is also why I love prosthetics: I can hide my face, hide myself and lose myself in the great game of acting."
Italian cinema and international sets: «We are second to none»
You have also worked in international productions. Is there really such a big difference compared to international sets?
«I believe that we Italians, from a preparation point of view, are second to none. Maybe we can envy foreigners the possibility of telling different stories, stories that we do less of. But we have extraordinary workers.
Then there are professions that are very little talked about. I think of the machine operator. This is crucial, because what you frame will be what the viewer sees. If you make a mistake in a movement, you have to redo the scene, the actor has to start again and the whole mechanism starts again.
We have Italian operators who are highly sought after by international cinema precisely because of their great ability."
The direction and those toys to build yourself
You have already directed a short film and would like to make a feature film. Why do you feel the need to go behind the camera?
«Because after all it's a game and there are toys that are more beautiful than others. If they don't give you those toys, or dad doesn't buy them for you, then try building them yourself. If I want a model of a plane that flies and no one will buy it for me, I try to build that plane.
But of course there is above all the desire to tell stories. Stories that arise during life, from the people you meet, look at, observe or simply love.
I received gifts from films like Kramer vs. Kramer, Pretty Woman, La La Land, Three Days of the Condor. At a certain point you think: I too would like to try to leave someone something similar to what those films left me.
And then you need your direction, your point of view, your camera movement, your way of playing at the cinema. It's a bit like inviting someone home instead of always taking them to a restaurant."
Monicelli and Kubrick, the two impossible encounters
Let's play a game. An Italian director and a foreigner with whom you would have liked to work, even among those who are no longer with us.
«Among the Italians Mario Monicelli. Not just because he was the king of comedy. I would have liked to know the man, his freedom. He always seemed to me like an impossible person to harness. Being directed by such a free man, who knows what freedom and strength he could have given to your interpretation too.
Among the foreigners Stanley Kubrick. For its total, absurd madness. I would have liked to enter for a while into the incredible madness of one of the most mysterious men in cinema."
And your favorite Kubrick?
«I'm torn between Barry Lyndon and Dr. Strangelove»
To young actors: «Look at everything. And never fall in line."
What would you say today to a boy or girl who wants to be an actor?
«To watch as many films as possible. Everyone. And to watch the actors of the past. Look at Gassman, Tognazzi, Daniel Day-Lewis. Go far away, look for films far away from you, try to understand what those actors did and how much work they had.
It almost serves as a vaccine against smallness. There have been people who have done extraordinary somersaults and you need to know them.
And then there's one thing not to do: never align yourself. You have to remain yourself and, above all, you have to be able to make mistakes, to be wrong. Because precisely the mistake can attract the curiosity and gaze of others.
Things that are perfectly aligned have no errors. Instead, a dress, when it's wrong, can be elegant."
Paolo Sorrentino and a ballet born thanks to an American
Speaking of happily "wrong" things: how was the famous ballet of Cardinal Assente born for Paolo Sorrentino?
«With Paolo, of course, nothing happens by chance, because I don't think he misses anything even when he sleeps.
We were at a party. I really like dancing and I bribed the bartender by telling her: “When the Americano finishes, please refill”. So I was, let's say, at temperature.
I was dancing and Paolo came to me, with his philosophically Neapolitan way of observing things, and said to me: "Are you always dancing?". I replied: “Paolo, I like it”.
A week later the secretary called me. Sorrentino had sent me a piece and wanted me to create a ballet. I studied a bit, I arrived on the set and he asked me from afar: "But am I dancing today?". "Yes, Paolo, don't worry. I dance."
He liked it. I believe that Sorrentino, in addition to having an enormous musical taste, is deeply fascinated by the movement of bodies, whether it is dance or not."
Venice as medicine: «I needed to be treated»
What does being in Venice this year mean to you?
«This 2026 has many meanings for me. First of all, Venice is medicine. Venice, like Italy, even before being a beautiful place, is a cure. And I needed to be taken care of.
For the first time I came from the first day and stayed for the whole two weeks. I had never done it. I needed to meet actors, directors, producers, but also to lose the night dancing and to experience this place as the Toyland of Pinocchio and Candlewick.
Above all, I needed to regain my love for this profession. Today we meet too little. Once upon a time, artists met in a restaurant: maybe it was cold outside, it was hot inside, writers, directors, actors met, someone gave another a joke.
To make art we need to meet again. Above all, cinema and theater come together."
Cinema and theatre: there is only good and bad acting
You continue to work a lot in the theater too. Is there really such a big difference between the stage and the camera?
«For me the difference is above all physical, almost mechanical. At the cinema I have a microphone, I have a camera. In the theater I have a stage and I have to reach the audience.
I often hear people say: “At the cinema I do less, in the theater I do more”. I don't think the problem is less or more. The problem is good acting and bad acting.
Naturally the tools change. It can be a bit like the difference between photography and painting. But for me the principle doesn't change."
And the theater will continue to accompany him between the end of 2026 and 2027: in November he will return to the stage with L'uomo rondine, written and directed by him and starring together with Giuseppe Scarpato; in April he will instead be the protagonist of his one man show. Then she will also return to play the role of the evil witch in a new production of Snow White. More masks, then. Still the pleasure of being elsewhere.
From Galileo to The Hounds: «I have finally achieved the papacy»
And on the screen? What are the next projects?
«First of all, there is the desire to start my own film project as a director. I have subjects, treatments and screenplays that I am taking to some production companies. I hope that something concrete can be achieved soon."
Among the commitments already scheduled there is the biographical film directed by Roan Johnson and dedicated to the life of Galileo Galilei. Lombardi will play Maffeo Barberini, who in 1623 was elected pope with the name Urban VIII.
An ecclesiastical promotion that the actor recounts with his usual irony: "I have finally reached the papacy."
And it's not over. Lombardi will also be in the series The Mastiffs for Netflix, while he hints at another yet unnamed project on the horizon.
Perhaps there could not have been a more coherent conclusion. Because Maurizio Lombardi seems to belong to that breed of actors who do not wish to be recognized at any cost. They prefer to be discovered.
A friar, a cardinal, a pope, a witch, maybe tomorrow someone who doesn't exist yet. Every time a different face and, underneath, the same childish pleasure of playing.
Possibly without aligning. Possibly wrong.
Because sometimes it is precisely in the error that elegance enters.
