Biography

Gaia Scodellaro (Naples, 15 July 1985) is an Italian actress and dancer. Scodellaro is the daughter of a former Neapolitan model and Karen Ford, an African-American dancer. After spending the first ten years of her life in Naples, the family moved to New York. She was strongly influenced by her mother's dancing skills and studied singing, acting and dancing. In 2005 she returned to Naples and gained her first professional experience in these fields. In 2009, she debuted in Berlin with a Burlesque entitled Ambrosia. Since 2010, she has been on Italian television in various roles, from Cugino & cugino to the web series Stuck - The Chronicles of David Rea. Her breakthrough in Italy came with the soap opera CentoVetrine, in which she played the role of Frida Baroni. In 2013 she was in the film Un'insolita vendemmia (An Unusual Harvest) with most of the cast of the soap. In the same year she was in Watch Them Fall with Marco Bocci. In 2022 she was in the cast of the series That Dirty Black Bag in the role of Lara. Her first role in a major international production was opposite Denzel Washington in The Equalizer 3 (2023), directed by Antoine Fuqua, in which she plays the role of Aminah. The movie was set on the Amalfi Coast, close to Scodellaro's native city of Naples.