Silvia Colloca is an Italian-Australian actress, opera singer, cookbook author, and TV cookery show personality. She has published four cookbooks.
Life and career
Colloca was born in Milan to Loredana and Mario Colloca. Her first major film role was in Van Helsing, in which she played Verona, one of Dracula's brides. On 25 September 2004, at the medieval castle of Montalto in Tuscany, Italy she married the Australian actor Richard Roxburgh who played Dracula in that film. They have two sons, Raphael Jack Domenico Roxburgh born in 2007 and Miro Gianni David Roxburgh born in 2010, and a daughter, Luna Roxburgh born in 2017. The family currently reside in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Colloca is an opera-trained mezzo-soprano and worked as a musical theatre performer in Italy before becoming a film actress. Silvia Colloca has won rave reviews by Australian press for her turn as Orfeo in Spectrum Now 2015 production of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, directed by Shannon Murphy. Diana Simmonds praised Colloca's performance in Stage Noise: "Orfeo's despair is gloriously realised by Colloca whose rich yet pure and powerful mezzo soprano and dramatic acting range are ideally suited to the decision to make Orfeo an ambiguous and androgynous figure. She projects all the strengths of masculine and feminine and unabashed emotion in the early scenes making the tragedy quickly tangible". In 2016 Colloca premiered the role of The Queen in Opera Queensland's newly commissioned Opera "Snow White", performed during the Brisbane festival. Once more, Silvia Colloca's performance won the hearts of theatre goers and critics. The Sydney Morning Herald described Colloca's work as "Silvia Colloca is extraordinary as the mother – her sexiness and vulnerability wrap around each other beautifully through the piece and she easily navigates the highs and lows her character is gifted. Her eventual breakdown is a joy to watch". Silvia is also credited as a producer, creator and writer of her shows. In 2017 she started her own YouTube channel and a collaboration with Marion Grasby. Together they have created the highly successful show "Wok X Pot", which premiered in late 2018.
"Made in Italy with Silvia Colloca", an Australian 10-part TV series, premiered on SBS TV in November 2014, coinciding with the publication of the book of the same name. Colloca took a film crew home to meet her Italian family, showcasing three picturesque regions of Italy, Abruzzo where her family is from, Marche, and Molise, using her mother's kitchen to present cucina povera.
