Inside Out

I was born in São Caetano do Sul, a city in San Paulo. My parents got divorced when I was 13, so we lived with my mum. My family wasn’t well-off, they were working and paying their bills but we were never really in a very comfortable situation. There was always a bit of difficulty – but that’s most families in Brazil.

I went to college and I graduated in finance. I got a job in a bank and after five years had no English whatsoever. At that stage, my manager was putting pressure on me to learn because I was dealing with American banks. Eventually I thought ‘I need to go abroad and learn English’. So that’s how it started. I began searching for a place to go.

I wanted to be in a country that was close to history and different cultures. The options were America, Australia, England, Ireland and Malta. I thought ‘Irish people have a bit of a buzz and they love socialising’. So that was it! I wanted to stay in a place where I knew I was going to be welcomed, and Ireland has been welcoming since day one. I love it here, I really do. It’s a lot easier to be gay in Ireland; people judge you a lot less than in Brazil.

I was only supposed to come for six months to learn English and go back, but three months in I met my husband and decided to stay. We’ve been together for nine years now, and married for one. When I got here my English was really bad, it was literally ‘hi and bye’ - more ‘bye’ than ‘hi’, actually. I met David online and he kept trying to meet in person. I thought, ‘I can handle the laptop and Google Translate, but in person this will be a nightmare’. Eventually he said: “If you don’t come and meet me today I’m going to delete your profile and we’ll never talk again.”

My 81 year-old granny came to our wedding. She’d never been on a plane before! She loves David, everyone does. Everyone in my family has always been so supportive.

Back in Brazil, I always wanted to become an actor. My parents weren’t supportive; they love me but it was always about making money so I wasn’t encouraged to really go for it. Eventually I became very unhappy at work. I wasn’t enjoying my career and David noticed that I wasn’t myself anymore. He said, ‘You’re doing something that you don’t love just for the money,’ so I decided I was going to leave finance to do my own thing.

I started by doing loads of work as an extra. I was an extra on Fair City. I always visualise things and I said to myself on set, ‘I’m going to be here; it’s just a matter of time.’ And now, here I am.

Fair City was my first big part. David and I were on our honeymoon in Greece and I got a message from my agent saying that the producers had seen my tapes and wanted to write a part for me. I was over the moon. In my mind, it was just going to be a tiny little role. Then I got the biography of Cristiano, and found out that he was a gay guy from Chile.

Cristiano’s very energetic and fun. He’s on the show because there’s a lot of heavy drama going on, and then you have Cristiano, who’s a little bit of comic relief. There’s no heaviness; he’s just a very friendly guy. We’re very similar; we’re both from South America, we’re both very hard working and we both talk a lot. That’s his main goal on the soap – you have an issue? Let’s talk about it.

I want to be as real as possible. I don’t have to worry about everything I do being about pushing the gay agenda. I play a guy that owns a coffee shop. He’s a member of the community and happens to be gay.

People warned me at the beginning about being typecast as a gay guy, but I don’t care. Cristiano is the first gay character I’ve played. I don’t want to worry about that sort of thing. It took me a long time to be who I am and to get where I am as a person. It wasn’t easy to come out, and there are so many places in the world where it’s still not okay. You don’t want people to tell you not to do that.

I think just being yourself is too boring, so acting is the only profession that appeals to me because I have the license to live somebody else’s life. I can play whoever I want. If I want to play a criminal I don’t have to go and kill someone, I just have to pretend to.

Many old ladies stop me in the streets and say, ‘Oh, you’re the guy who plays Cristiano, you make me smile.’ It’s so hard to touch people’s lives, but I think an actor has the power to do that.

If I go back to Brazil I’m not going to have what I have here, which is my stability, my career, and the love of my life. It’s the kind of stuff you can’t leave. What I have here in Ireland now, it’s enough.