Meet Leonardo Cecchi | Actor

We had the good fortune of connecting with Leonardo Cecchi and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Leonardo, where are your from? We’d love to hear about how your background has played a role in who you are today?
My dad grew up swimming and he managed to go to the Barcelona Olympics of 1992. This is just to give you an idea of the kind of “work towards your goals” mentality that he passed on to me. He never pressured me into a specific career, but always told me that “no matter what you decide to do, give it your all without making comparisons”. This is the same approach I have with acting and my career. Secondly, growing up in Italy allowed me to have a wider cultural view than if I had grown up solely in Minnesota, so I am very thankful for that.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Well.. I began acting, singing and dancing in youth theatre productions at the age of 6 years old. My father later found me a unique performing arts high school in Turin, Italy, which I quickly fell in love with. Here, I continued training in stage acting, diction, jazz dance and singing for musical theatre. During my sophomore year, a casting director from Disney Italy went scouting at that high school and soon after, I was cast as the lead of the hit Disney tv show Alex&Co, my first onscreen role.

I truly cherishes the memories from that experience because they confirmed that acting was what I wanted to do. I learned so much about the craft and gained so much experience from spending many hours on set, that was such a blessing.

Once graduated in 2017, I permanently moved to Los Angeles to chase the dream I had since I was a toddler, “to become an established actor in the US”.
Here I quickly found representation with The Savage Agency, I started training at The Chubbuck Acting Studio and began studying chemistry at Santa Monica College. I later got into UCLA with a 4.0 GPA but opted to complete my degree at a later date due to increasing work opportunities.

The first big challenge was getting rid of an Italian accent I had developed during the time spent in Italy. This took many, many hours of reading out loud and recording myself to check pronunciation patterns and trying to fix them. In time I was able to get a handle on it, but I purposely did not get rid of it in case I needed it for a role, which I did! I ended up using my Italian accent in the movie Lamborghini: The Man Behind The Legend. I played the engineer Gian Paolo Dallara who historically helped Ferruccio Lamborghini create the iconic Miura.
The most exciting project I have out at the moment is the HBOMax feature film, A Christmas Mystery, my first US feature as a lead character. That role for me represents all the hard work it took to move from Italy and get a handle on my craft and accent.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
In LA, I love to surf. So if my friend likes the water just as much as I do, I’d take them to a novice friendly beach like Sunset Beach next to Gladstones (favorite restaurant by the beach, but a bit pricey) or Venice beach even, in front of Muscle Beach. For the more adventurous friends, I love to go camping, so a trip to Yosemite or some other place in nature would be wonderful! In essence, I love nature and it’s a blessing any time I get to spend time immersed in it. Also, I would definitely take my friend to Marugame Udon on Sawtelle boulevard, in Santa Monica. We don’t have Udon in Italy, and this place makes the noodles fresh every night. It’s soooo good.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I mean…. everyone and no one! I believe that whoever I am lucky enough to work with, study with and even just interact with somehow impacts me as a human and in turn betters me as a storyteller. Yet I cannot really pin point a specific person, group, organization or book that I’d dedicate this shoutout to. I don’t believe that would be accurate for my journey in particular. The only exception would be my father, who taught me the meaning of hard work. He also showed me what I was capable of when I gave it my all (without comparing myself to other people), which somehow has always been more than I thought or gave myself credit for, and I believe this is true for each and every one of us. A cute analogy for this is; when you’re swimming in a race, don’t look over to the other row to see how fast your competitor is going, because turning your head will slow you down. Look straight ahead, and go as fast as you can go.

Website: https://entertainmentpro.net/leonardo-cecchi/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leonardodcecchi/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/leocecchi98?lang=en

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LeonardoCecchiV

Other: IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm7659743/