Performer of the Day: Daria Sarmientos
Daria Sarmientos is an actress from Italy making her way in Hollywood. Since a young age, Daria has found the world of acting intriguing and watched movies again and again until she knew the lines by heart.
Her path to the screen wound through university classrooms and corporate offices before she committed fully to performance. She earned a degree in political science and international relations, then pivoted once acting pulled her back in. After training at Accademia Artisti in Milan and completing a second degree at the New York Film Academy in Los Angeles, she began building credits across short films, music videos, and eventually features and television.
Recent Film and Television Credits
Her recent slate stretches well beyond the two short films highlighted in earlier coverage. Credits now include lead turns in The Death of an Artist and Last Dance, both completed under director Li Songhuan. She later appeared in Awakening in 2023, took a role in the Showtime series Super Pumped in 2022, and worked on Strayed the same year. Additional projects such as Alaya continue to surface on her social channels, reflecting steady movement between independent features and episodic work.
Post-2019 Career Milestones and Features
After the initial wave of short-form work, Sarmientos stepped into leading parts on longer projects. She filmed Circle Bridge, which remained in post-production as of 2023, and lined up The Hamlet as a follow-up feature. Representation through Sarah Yapelli at Black Apple Talent has helped anchor those moves while she balances festival-ready shorts with larger productions.
Continued Short Film Success and Awards
The music video Sight, directed by Sharwin Samant, kept collecting recognition after its early festival run. It earned Best Music Video at Indie Short Fest, Best Shorts Competition, and Direct Monthly Online Film Festival. That run sits alongside earlier screenings for Obsexion at the Burbank International Film Festival in 2018 and In it Together at the Hollywood Reel Independent Film Festival in 2019. Interviews from 2022 and 2023 note that the pace of short-form work has remained consistent even as longer projects entered the calendar.
Life in Los Angeles and Ongoing Training
Sarmientos continues to live and work primarily in Los Angeles, the city she moved to after finishing her Milan training. Recent conversations describe an ongoing rhythm of auditions, set days, and occasional returns to formal workshops that keep her range sharp. The Italian-born actor has spoken about balancing the city’s industry pace with the personal discipline that first drew her to the craft.
She still cites Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep among her strongest influences, pointing to their sustained evolution as proof that actors keep refining their approach across decades. Her television recommendations remain unchanged: Euphoria, Big Little Lies, Game of Thrones, Thirteen Reasons Why, and Black Mirror. Forrest Gump stays her desert-island pick, admired for its storytelling scope and technical execution.
Her process for stepping into new roles has stayed steady. She reads the script repeatedly, aligns with the director’s vision, then begins adopting the character’s habits and thought patterns until the performance feels instinctive. That same immersion guided her work on Last Dance and The Death of an Artist, where desert conditions and long location days tested both endurance and trust within the crew.
Before committing to acting full time, she spent several years in the financed-projects department of a pharmaceutical company after completing her political science degree. The shift from spreadsheets to call sheets still registers as one of her more surprising career turns. She now describes the craft itself as inseparable from her identity rather than a job layered on top of it.
Looking ahead, Circle Bridge and The Hamlet represent the next visible steps on a résumé that already spans music videos, award-winning shorts, and episodic television. The cumulative output since her move to Los Angeles underscores a deliberate pace: consistent work across formats, continued festival presence, and a widening circle of collaborators. Her stated mission remains the same: to pull audiences into the emotional current of each story and leave them changed by the ride.
