Camila Morrone takes center stage, free from the shadow of her past relationship with Leonardo DiCaprio

As a child, Camila Morrone (Los Angeles, 28) found it odd when she heard her mother and father arguing and repeating the same lines over and over in her family living room. She later understood that her parents’ profession — they are both actors — required long hours of learning lines, rehearsing scripts, and attending auditions that did not always have the hoped-for outcome. The actress has said she grew to feel some aversion to acting during her teens, though deep down she knew it was the path she would follow.

This year may be the most important of her career so far because of the impact and reception of her work. Her performance in the Netflix miniseries Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, a horror drama directed by Haley Z. Boston and co-starring Adam Di Marco (The White Lotus), has earned such strong reviews that the trade press already sees her as a possible Emmy nominee. If that happens, it would be her second; the first came in 2023 for her role as Camila Alvarez-Dunne in Daisy Jones & the Six. Discerning horror audiences have responded very positively to her new series. According to the platform’s data, the show was among the most-watched content in the United States days after it premiered.

This is the first project produced by the Duffer brothers since the phenomenon of Stranger Things. The actress told Deadline that although the shoot was tough, her rapport with her co-star made it much more bearable: “I’m going to remember this forever. We had so many inside jokes. We were so delirious shooting horror night shoots in winter in Canada, that we just had to make each other laugh all day, because it was too painful.” In a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter last April, Morrone described the series as “the best version of an indie horror film with the grandeur of a big-budget Netflix series.” And it is precisely between those two worlds — indie cinema and the major streaming platforms — that she moves effortlessly.

Argentine origins and a connection to Al Pacino

This is not the only project the California native of Argentine descent has wrapped recently. Morrone is part of the second season of The Night Manager, a Prime Video series that premiered in January as a sequel to the first season from 2016, which was based on John Le Carré’s novel. The first season was one of that year’s big hits and its three principal stars (Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie, and Olivia Colman) took home Golden Globes. In the second installment the action moves to Colombia, with Hiddleston leading the cast. He is joined by Diego Calva as Teddy Dos Santos, an arms dealer, and Morrone as Roxana Bolaños, a key figure in the spy thriller. She has nothing but praise for the series and says the role gave her the chance to speak both English and Spanish, something new in her acting career: “I’m Argentine and I had never had the opportunity to play a character who spoke both languages. It was exciting to share that part of my personal life because it’s an important part of who I am,” she said in an interview during promotion. The new episodes have been well-received and, although a third season has not yet been confirmed, the actress would be delighted to return: “Call me for season three, okay?” she joked when asked about it.

Her Argentine roots come from both her father, actor Máximo Morrone, and her mother, actress Lucila Polak. From them she inherited an interest in the craft of acting, of which she has also known the harsher side: “I’d go with them to their castings and wait in the casting room with them after school,” she told Interview magazine in 2023 in an interview conducted by Riley Keough, her co-star in Daisy Jones & the Six. That atypical childhood for any child, though not so unusual in the hills of Los Angeles, changed when her parents separated in 2006. Two years later her mother began a decade-long relationship with Al Pacino, with whom Morrone was raised for years and whom she describes as “the Messi of our industry,” a soccer metaphor that betrays her Argentine blood. In The Times she referred to him as “a father figure,” although “not technically my stepfather.” “I’m very lucky to have met him and to have been raised in his presence,” she added.

Indie cinema and Netflix: a career in progress

Added to those two releases is another interesting project on the horizon. A seven-month shoot in Prague has just wrapped on the new adaptation of The Age of Innocence. Edith Wharton’s novel will arrive on Netflix soon in series form, with Morrone as Countess Ellen Olenska. The success of the 1993 film adaptation directed by Martin Scorsese (with Michelle Pfeiffer in the role Morrone will now play) has raised great expectations for this new version, for which no release date has been announced. According to reports, the story will focus on the love triangle, but the actress has offered few clues beyond saying how “incredible” the costumes and set were.

After many years in which her name was tied to her relationship with Leonardo DiCaprio, whom she dated for five years until 2022, Morrone has earned critical respect through her recent projects. Now she generates headlines for her work rather than her personal life. The actress’s filmography, steady but without the scramble of back-to-back titles that sometimes marks young careers, is notable for independent films directed by women. In recent years we have seen her in Never Goin’ Back (2018), directed by Augustine Frizzell; in Mickey and the Bear (2019), by Annabelle Attanasio; and in Patricia Arquette’s directorial debut, Gonzo Girl (2023), where she shared the screen with Willem Dafoe and Arquette herself. Whether in indie films or in multimillion-dollar series, Morrone follows a single rule when choosing a project, she told Net-a-Porter: “When I get a job opportunity, I think, ‘Is this easy for me? Could I do this with my eyes closed?’ If it is, then it’s not the right job.”

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition