Actors and the COVID-19 Pandemic in Italy

This special section of the issue was published with the support of the PRIN 2017 F-ACTOR: Forms of Contemporary Media Professional Acting. Training, Recruitment and Management, Social Discourse in Italy (2000–2020), financed by MUR. The issue focuses on the impact that the COVID-19 crisis had on the work of actors and actresses in Italy. In particular, three main themes are addressed in the essays that make up the special section: the development of a televisual style celebrity and process of aesthetic hybridization conveying messages of solidarity and togetherness; the role of actors and actresses in awareness raising; the willingness of performers to expose intimacy and ordinariness as a way to connect to the public.