Asia Argento on Racist Role, Locarno Honor, Gia Carangi

Asia Argento, the actress and filmmaker best known to international audiences for her role in xXx, used her moment in the spotlight at the Locarno Film Festival to address a provocative new chapter in her career: playing a character she describes as "a racist." The Italian star, who was on hand to receive a career honor at the Swiss festival, also revealed that she is stepping behind the scenes as an executive producer on a documentary about the late model Gia Carangi, a project that promises to revisit a tragic fashion-world icon.

Speaking to reporters at the festival, Argento confirmed that her next acting role will deliberately challenge both herself and her audience. "It's a part that requires you to sit with discomfort," she said of the character, whom she bluntly labeled as racist. While she declined to name the film or its director, Argento framed the decision as a deliberate move away from the politically safe roles often offered to women of her generation. She stressed that the character is not a caricature, but a layered, flawed human being whose prejudices are meant to be examined rather than celebrated. "We live in a time when we want to erase the ugly sides of people," she added. "But art should hold a mirror up to all of it."

The Locarno honor, which she received during the festival's 79th edition, carried a particularly emotional weight for Argento, who has spent decades oscillating between the fringes of European art cinema and the mainstream pull of Hollywood. Her career began as a teenager in her father Dario Argento's horror films, but it was the 2002 action blockbuster xXx that made her a household name opposite Vin Diesel. That commercial triumph, she reflected, was something of a double-edged sword - it opened doors globally but also typecast her in a way she has spent the ensuing years trying to shatter. In her Locarno remarks, she spoke of the honor as recognition not of a single hit, but of a body of work that has often courted controversy, from her directorial debut Scarlet Diva to her outspoken activism in the #MeToo movement.

Beyond the acting news, Argento’s most unexpected announcement was her attachment to a documentary on Gia Carangi, the pioneering supermodel of the late 1970s and early 1980s whose meteoric rise was cut short by her battle with heroin addiction and her death from AIDS-related complications in 1986 at age 26. Argento said she was drawn to the project not merely because of Carangi's iconic status, but because of the raw, unvarnished tragedy of her story - a narrative often sanitized in pop culture retellings. "Gia was not a cautionary tale," Argento explained. "She was a woman who fought against a system that devoured her. That's a story I understand on a cellular level."

As executive producer, Argento says she will work closely with the directing team to ensure the film avoids the glossy, redemptive arcs typical of fashion documentaries. Instead, she hopes to foreground Carangi’s sexuality, her struggles with fame, and the predatory nature of an industry that chewed her up. "There is a way to tell her story that is both brutal and beautiful," Argento said. "We owe her that honesty." The project is in early development, with no release date set, but Argento’s involvement is expected to attract attention from both the fashion world and the festival circuit.

Argento’s own relationship with the industry has been marked by similar turbulence. In 2018, she became a central figure in the #MeToo movement when she publicly accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault, a charge he has denied. That same year, she settled a separate legal dispute involving a payment to Jimmy Bennett, a young actor who alleged she had sexually assaulted him in 2013; Argento denied the allegation and called the settlement a "rescue" of a troubled friend. The duality of her public persona - victim and accused, agitator and survivor - has made her a polarizing figure, and she acknowledged in Locarno that her new roles, both in front of and behind the camera, are part of a deliberate effort to reckon with that complexity. "I don't ask you to like me," she told the audience. "I just ask you to watch."

The Locarno tribute, which was followed by a screening of one of her early films, served as a reminder of her longevity in an industry that discards women quickly. At 50, she remains a defiant presence, unafraid to use her platform to discuss the ugly corners of human behavior - whether on screen as a bigot or off screen as a producer revisiting the trauma of a fallen icon. The documentary on Carangi, if it comes to fruition, could be her most personal project yet, one that will likely draw parallels between the model's self-destruction and Argento's own difficult navigation of fame. For now, she is basking in the Swiss applause, but her mind is clearly on the next fight. "The stories that scare you are the only ones worth telling," she said. "And I'm not done being scared."

Source: Hollywood Reporter