Sylvia De Fanti

Italian actress, Sylvia De Fanti was actually born in Montreal, while her father - an international business man - was working there. Becoming a fluently multi-lingual, international, stage and screen performer was pre-ordained. At age 2, her parents moved the family to Panama, before moving again, this time to Hong Kong. It was here, starting school at age 5, that Sylvia learned to speak, read and write in English, attending a private, English-language school. Her parents decided it was important to them that Sylvia and her brother Roberto (now a European Football agent) be raised in their native Italy, and so at age 12, her family returned to Rome, where she studied in her native language for the first time. As a teen, her beauty stopped a model scout on the street, who convinced her parents to allow her to briefly sign with a modeling agency. After two years of university in Rome, Sylvia was accepted to The Sorbonne, where she enrolled in a Human Sciences curriculum that included courses in Cinema, Postmodernism and Women & Gender Studies. In Paris, she stoked her feminism and her activism, perfected her French, honed her acting skills and went on stage for the first time. She returned to study at La Sapienza, while also continuing her acting training before beginning her career as a theatre, film and television actress. Sylvia graduated Cum Laude with an M. S. in Science of Communication in Cultural Anthropology. She wrote her thesis on Chaos Theory and Complex Identity. In 2004 she co-founded Angelo Mai, an independent creative space and cultural production center, which is frequented by renowned international performers and creatives from the music, literature, art, film & TV worlds, with revered global status as "the" must-visit for the hip and cultured who visit Rome. At Angelo Mai, Sylvia co-launched Bluemotion, a resident theater company, widely credited with the launch of new wave of modern English dramaturgy in Italy. She is often a lead in their productions, sometimes in roles that also highlight her abilities for singing and playing bass guitar. Another of Sylvia's passions Teatro Valle Occupato, a seminal cog in the #occupy movement wheel, lauded by The New York Times and The Guardian, the maverick institution was established to empower Italy's workers in the fields of art, entertainment and culture. The organization was bestowed with the European Cultural Foundation's prestigious Princess Margriet Award; one of several humanitarian and cultural awards she has been present to receive on the group's behalf. Sylvia has worked with lauded American, Italian, French, and Spanish directors both on screen and on stage. A series regular on season nine of Italy's hugely popular and longest-running television series, Incantesimo, Sylvia was Paolo Sorrentino's first choice for the role of 'Sofia' on his critically acclaimed HBO series The Young Pope.