We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Gaia Bertoncini. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Gaia below.

Gaia, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

I think the most important thing we can do with our life is to leave our comfort zone, because that’s where life begins. When I moved from my small village to America at 19 I didn’t know what I would expect me in the wild world. When you are 19 you take risks more easily, even if you don’t have the instruments to cope with the consequences, when you are 26 you have the instruments but not same the courage, my challenge is to maintain always the mentality that I had when I moved to La and the same courage for my future adventures.

Gaia, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a Swiss Italian model and actress, I studied at Stella Adler Academy in Los Angeles, where I had the pleasure to act in Theatre, impersonating characters like Molly from ”The Mousetrap”, Annie from ”All my sons” and many others. I came back to Switzerland during the pandemic decided to dedicate some time to grow my social media and using tiktok I reached about 48k followers! I created an account where I impersonated this messy French girl. Last year I took part to the Miss Universe Switzerland contest, and I arrived in the top 10. Now I’m in Europe and focusing on my modeling and acting career, I moved close to Milan at the beginning of this year (2024) and have many projects coming up!

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

For me the most important mission is to inspire people to never give up and to be consistent with their goals. No matter what happens, keep going. My Grandfather was my biggest inspiration, he sadly died during the pandemic, but I am writing a screenplay on his lifestory, during world war 2, and I really want and will make everything to make this project come to life, because it’s close to my heart, and I’m sure many people will identify with it.
Art is never about oneself, is about the community, is about humanity, so if you have a story that touched your soul, you shouldn’t private the world from it, you should give it!

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Coming from a very small town, many people labeled me as crazy when I decided to go by myself to Los Angeles, just cause I had a dream. But dreams are what keep people alive, without it you are just surviving. So I decided I would protect my dream at all cost, never let it die, and still it is, there in my heart, always closer and closer. You can’t give up.
I think the biggest challenge in this human life is to remain true to yourself while pressure is trying to hold you down.
Many people will misunderstand you and that’s okay, you don’t have to conform, you have to be yourself.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.instagram.com/iamgayaa/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamgayaa/
• Other: tiktok ; @gaiabertoncini

Image Credits
Oliver Dütschler