People Gledis Cinque

From being Gledis to being Irene thanks also to management skills

10 Mar 2024, by Diana Cavalcoli

Actress Gledis Cinque recounts the difficulties and prejudices of a profession in which female roles are often only thought of as being for the very young. Today, dividing her time between acting and managing the theatre association she founded, she confesses: "I am saved by my managerial skills"

“A career as an actress? Difficult, unpredictable and with few guarantees. But having managerial skills and having learned a rigorous working method at university helped me a lot.” Gledis Cinque now lives for her art. The path that led her to work in theater and television (she played Irene Pivetti in the TV series 1994) began with a great passion for acting, accompanied by many years of study and training.

“I come from Lecco,” she says, “where I attended a science-based high school. After graduating, I thought about studying physics or medicine, but thanks to my father’s positive experience, I decided to major in economics at Bocconi in CLEACC “In those years I also attended the theater course at the Carcano in Milan.
I studied during the day and acted at night. It was there that I began to realize that I wanted to be an actress by profession and that a traditional Bocconi path would not be compatible with my dream,”
she adds.

So Cinque looked for alternatives to a 9-to-5 office job. She explains: “A professor told me that Gualtiero Marchesi needed an assistant for an exhibition dedicated to him and for the activities of the Foundation that had just opened. For six months I was his shadow and I became passionate about haute cuisine, which I already loved.” After this experience, Cinque was called to Bocconi University as a research assistant in the field of fine dining. “It was an extremely flexible job that allowed me to organize my time as I saw fit. So I moved to London with the man who later became my husband and started working as an actress at the same time.”

However, the job market for actors in England is not the most welcoming. She says: “I faced a lot of prejudice, both because I was a foreigner and because I was a woman: female roles are often written for very young people and the competition is fierce.” A few roles for a lot of actresses. But Cinque persevered and, together with a number of colleagues of different nationalities, founded NUKBA – a network formed under the umbrella of the Equity union to protect and promote non-British actors working in the UK. Despite the difficulties, she stayed in London for six years, working on the set of the BBC series River.

Two years ago, after the pandemic, she decided to go back to Italy. “Being the eclectic that I am, I also wanted to do a second degree: Cultural Heritage at the University of Milan,” she smiles as she explains the challenges of working, studying and running the theater association she founded in 2008, Passi Teatrali (PaT). “Today I run this association as I go from one set to another. My managerial skills have saved me.”

The association has created a competition for young scriptwriters, with a cash prize and the possibility of staging the winning plays. For Cinque, this means a new challenge: being a director. “I am on the other side for the first time. It’s a different job, from casting to choosing the actors, but I approach it with great curiosity.” Always with the desire to do well and to move her audience.