Her talent is for tongues Branching out into computer gaming roles: Rosati

Eric Morse –

Multilingual actress and Leslieville resident Cristina Rosati is making an impression in roles that take advantage of her background growing up in an Italian family in Montreal.

She grew up speaking Italian as a mother tongue, but learned French and English fluently along with Spanish. The languages have served her well as a working actor for 13 years.

“My first acting gig at age 17 in Montreal was a student movie called One Hot-Rodding Zombie Love Song,” Rosati told The Bulletin.

Since then, Rosati has studied in workshops in Montreal and at the Theatre Conservatory in Los Angeles, but clearly treasures and misses most her long-term and very close relationship with her late mentor and coach Jacqueline McClintock of Montreal.

McClintock passed away last year.

“She was an amazing woman,” Rosati remembers.

“She had a way of getting into people’s hearts that was just fantastic. She was one of the most passionate people I have ever met.”

Rosati is cast in both Francophone and English roles. She plays a neurosurgeon (Dr Giulia Amaro) in the Radio-Canada French TV series Trauma and is now beginning a new Radio Canada series which is still under wraps. Her latest gig—which should air “in the next few weeks”—is a guest appearance on the English-language police drama Rookie Blue, set in Toronto.

“They were actually looking for a backpacker with a German accent. I told my agent, ‘I don’t know anything about German accents.’ She said just go and do an Italian accent. The director asked me if I really spoke Italian, and I got the role and we ended up doing the scene entirely in Italian.”

Her next project is still pretty much under wraps however she was able to reveal that she is one of the two female leads in a Hallmark Christmas comedy called Christmas Share.

Her co-leads will be Tricia Helfer (Cylon Number Six of Battlestar Galactica fame) and up-and-coming country singer J T Hodges.

When not working in film and TV, she is taking on roles in the comparatively new acting field of computer gaming. She works with Montreal-based production company Ubisoft and has acted (CGI movement and voiceover) in two releases of Assassin’s Creed: in one, she played the Renaissance Italian historical character Caterina Sforza, enemy of Cesare Borgia.

Rosati is a dedicated morning runner and yoga practitioner who favours the ansara school —but will do any style—and since she has Vaganova (Mariinsky/Kirov School) classical ballet training she likes to keep in practice.

She is also a “total foodie” of eclectic tastes and admits,

“I’ll eat anything.” She loves to cook and favours simple recipes—“a good fish in the oven with lime and capers is delicious”—but has plenty of bench strength in pastas handed down from her Italian grandmother.