A brilliant and comprehensive exploration of the role of the non-professional in Italian and world cinema, this book is sure to become indispensable reading for anyone with an interest in realist cinema as well as casting, acting and stardom.

Stephen Gundle, Professor of Film & Television Studies, University of Warwick, UK

Catherine O’Rawe’s book offers a compelling counter-history of film acting through the disruptive figure of the non-actor. She excavates a myth of neorealism and its progeny — the idea that ‘authentic’ non-professionals, plucked from the street and projected on screen, can puncture cinema’s fakery and capture something of the ‘real’ — and gleans from it illuminating insights into children and stardom, voice and body, labour and performance, casting and reception, and much more besides.

Robert S. C. Gordon, Serena Professor of Italian, University of Cambridge, UK

There are books that consolidate scholarly subjects and then there are those that basically design new research fields by combining scholars’ insights and findings. O’Rawe has given order to the study of the non-professional actor by enlightening its historical dimensions (from the colonial cinema of Fascist Italy and neorealism to the global present), performative patterns and theoretical affordances in a marvelously researched, remarkably argued and beautifully illustrated intervention. Her work will be the key reference for scholars in Italian and world cinema for years to come.

Giorgio Bertellini, Professor of Film, Television and Media, University of Michigan, USA