Fernando Alves Pinto was born in São Paulo in 1969. Raised in a family of artists, he engaged in plays at school in Brazil at a very young age, and later in New York, where he played Moliére in a French production, Butoh Dance at the La MaMa theatre. The company was part of The Adaptors Movement Theatre. His first role in the cinema was Paco in Walter Salles’ and Daniela Thomas’ feature, Foreign Land (1998).

He has since acted in more than 20 Brazilian features and 30 short movies. They include Two Rabbits (Afonso Poyart, 2012), a fragmented criminal thriller akin to Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994) and the Austro-Brazilian Flieger über Amazonien (Herbert Brodl, 2009), a film about a pilot’s passion for flying and fate.

In 1992, João Moreira Salles started making a film about Santiago, the butler who had been working for his parents since his childhood. Thirteen years later, Salles looks back at the unused material on the now deceased servant. Through Santiago’s detailed memories and contemplations, and the director’s voice-over, the film reflects on identity, memory and the nature of documentaries.

In 1996, in the last week of filming Tonic Dominant (Lina Chamie, 2000), Alves Pinto suffered an accident and was in comma for a week, which affected his memory and cognitive skills. Filmmaker Chamie assisted his recovery by providing the actor with clarinet and music lessons. In the film he plays a musician.

Alves Pinto’s most recent film is To My Beloved (Aly Muritiba, 2015) that won the Silver Zenith Award in Montréal World Film Festival last year, as well as several prizes in the Brasília Film Festival.

He can be reached at fernandoalvespinto@me.com.