Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Leonardo Cecchi. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Leonardo thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What was the most important lesson/experience you had in a job that has helped you in your creative career?

The first job I landed once I moved to the US was a low budget feature film. I did not know where this was going to air nor much about the project. I got on set and, to me and my naive perspective, the project seemed a little amateurish, because the cameras weren’t the fanciest, the lighting wasn’t the most elaborate and there weren’t that many people on set. I unfortunately let this affect my performance. I though “I mean… who’s going to see this really…” and I didn’t really give my all in my preparation nor during my performance. One year later I saw that movie was streaming on Hulu. That was a chance for me to show off my love for the craft and what I can bring to it but instead, I “half assed it” because of some assumptions I had made. I learned to never let things like budget, status or anything else stop me from bringing my A game to any role I ever play. Because if I don’t bring my A game, someone else will.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m an actor, writer, singer, and content creator based in Los Angeles California (how rare right?!). What I think sets me apart from others in this town is my commitment and dedication to the performing arts, my enthusiasm to always keep learning and striving for excellence, all while still enjoying the process. I’m also pretty agile, I love doing stunts, surfing and being immersed in nature.

I was born in Minneapolis Minnesota from an American mother and an Italian father, which blessed me with the cultural riches of both countries. From a very young age, I started showing a strong passion for the performing arts. I began acting, singing and dancing in youth theatre productions at the age of 6 years old. Later on, my father 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 truly a blessing. Once graduated in 2017, I permanently moved to Los Angeles to chase that very dream I had since I was a toddler.
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.

In just 5 years as a professional actor, I’ve been fortunate enough to have appeared in 6 feature films, 4 television series, one of which, Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Stories, 3 theatrical productions and one original short movie which I wrote, directed, and acted in. In this short movie, I played 7 different characters all at once, a performance that earned two nominations and one win for best actor at the LA-TopShorts film festival.

Most recently, I just finished filming (last week) a comedy feature film for HULU, which I cannot wait for everyone to see, it’s the funniest script I have every read and I’m honored to be a part of it. More info to come.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

The first big challenge I encountered once moving to LA was getting rid of an Italian accent I had developed during my time spent in Italy. This took many hours spent reading out loud and recording myself to check the pronunciation patterns. At times this felt like a hopeless task, I just couldn’t get it done. Yet, over the course of a few years, I was able to get a handle on it.

Last year, I was cast as one of the leads in the the HBOMax feature film, A Christmas Mystery. That role for me represents all the hard work it took to move from Italy and get a handle on my craft and my accent. I hope it leads to many more projects like it.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My goal is to inspire, entertain, comfort and heal through my work in the same way that shows and movies have done for me when I needed it the most.

Growing up, I went through a 7 year long custody battle, from ages 8 to 15, and whenever times got rough or I felt overwhelmed, I watched the show F.R.I.E.N.D.S. and all of the sudden, I was in a different reality where time and actions didn’t carry the same weight. Or I would watch movies such as Forest Gump, which would inspire me to see the good in people, teach me something about life or warm my heart in some other magical way. It has ever since been my dream to do the same for others through my work as an actor, and someday hopefully through my work as a screenwriter.

Contact Info:

• 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: https://www.tiktok.com/@itsleonardocecchi