With Ferrari, Gabriel Leone Is Off to the Races

In what he describes as an "amazing coincidence," the Brazilian actor Gabriel Leone has become one of the world's preeminent portrayers of race car drivers. He calls me as he's on the way back to his hotel after a day shooting the upcoming Netflix series Senna, about famed Formula 1 driver Ayrton Senna, an icon who died following a crash in 1994.

But our call is actually ostensibly to discuss the other famed driver he has played: this one in Michael Mann's Ferrari, where he appears as driver Alfonso De Portago opposite Adam Driver's Enzo Ferrari. "It's the same universe even if we are talking about different eras," he says. "Like I don't know how many decades separating the characters but still you are talking about racing drivers, you are talking about adrenaline and passion about motorsporting."

Leone exudes passion on screen and in our Zoom, chatty and warm even through a phone camera with slight connectivity issues. And he has reason to be excited about where his career is heading.

Mann's long-in-the-works film about the Ferrari founder marks Leone's first project outside of Brazil. The now 30-year-old actor strides into the film as the confident Spanish aristocrat who all but demands a place on Ferrari's racing team, one that he gets when another driver is killed in an accident—a disturbing bit of foreshadowing for de Portago's fate. Leone portrays de Portago as determined but also suave, engaged in a romance with movie star Linda Christian, played by actress Sarah Gadon.

Something about Leone's demeanor immediately struck Mann as right for the role. The director of lauded films like Heat and The Last of the Mohicans cast Leone without ever meeting him in person. All Mann needed was Leone's audition tape and an episode of his Brazilian Prime Video series Dom. "It's amazing just to be auditioning for Michael of course," Leone says. "And, I don't know, probably two days after I sent the audition I got the part."

A week later Leone was on a Zoom with Mann. During their first face-to-face meeting over a computer Mann told Leone, "this character is made for you and you were made for this character," Leone remembers. He was shocked, but came to Leone that Mann has an innate understanding of what he wants out of this story. Within a month he would be on the set in Modena, Itay, alongside Driver and his fellow costars Penélope Cruz and Shailene Woodley. "It was unbelievable," he says.

Leone had been a longtime fan of Mann. His father showed him Mohicans, the drama set during the French and Indian war starring Daniel Day-Lewis, when he was just 12, and he became preoccupied with that movie, rewatching it throughout the years and playing the soundtrack on repeat. "I remember getting some of the images from the movie stuck in my head," he says. "I couldn't stop thinking about that." Now he was unpacking the contradictions of his own character with Mann.

When discussing the role, Leone explains that he and Mann decided to focus on finding De Portago’s "ferocity and passion" for racing, despite coming from nobility. "My main motivation for the character [was] to play him with as much as life as I could, as much joy as I could," he says. "We wanted him to be so alive and so full of energy."

But beyond the acting, Leone also had to learn to drive. Even though he's in the midst of playing yet another race car driver in Senna, when Leone first got the Ferrari role, he didn't know much about the sport. The first step in his research was watching the Netflix docuseries Formula 1: Drive to Survive, and then went deeper into his character and the specifics around 1957 Italian racing culture.

Then he actually got behind the wheel. Leone spent about two months practicing two to three times a week with real stunt drivers. "When you are on a racing track, it's a totally different mindset," he says. "It took me some days to allow myself to drive in a more aggressive way, because I was driving the way I was taught to."

Leone got the part in Senna while he was Modena, and, as we speak, he's on what is essentially a world tour shooting that show. Though he's currently in his home country, where he still is based, the production is also taking him to Argentina, Uruguay, and Ireland. It's exhausting, but Leone, who projects a natural exuberance, is taking it in stride. "I'm tired, but most of all I'm happy," he says.

Ferrari is in theaters December 25, 2023.