The beauty of being blonde for a role is Sara Sampaio is actually able to watch herself on screen.
“It felt like a little disconnect,” says the natural brunette. “So I was actually able to enjoy it.”
The 24-year-old Portuguese model-turned-actor makes her major screen debut in the new “Superman” movie, playing Eve Teschmacher, girlfriend of Lex Luther, who ends up instigating a rather pivotal plot point. Eve presents as a selfie-snapping crazy girlfriend, something Sampaio knew immediately she wanted to play.
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“I just loved how chaotic and crazy and funny she is, and I love comedy. I read it and I’m like, ‘oh, I know exactly how I would want to play her,’” Sampaio says. “She has this crazy-eyes-energy and I’m like, ‘oh, I love her already.’ As women, we don’t really get the chance to sometimes be crazy and just be completely out of our mind, so it was fun to tap into that.”
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Sampaio grew up in Porto, Portugal, and has been modeling since she was a teenager. In 2013 she walked her first Victoria’s Secret fashion show, and became an Angel in 2015. Acting, however, was always the dream. Her school had acting classes and those were always her favorite. When it came time for university, she wanted to study acting but her plan quickly went sideways.
“I ended up studying something more normal” — advanced math — “and was supposed to do acting on the side, and then after I started modeling. I didn’t do either,” she says.
“I’m very glad modeling happened, because it took me all over the world, and I don’t think I would have the opportunities that I have right now if it wasn’t for that,” she says.
In 2018, she was in the midst of a great year modeling but had never been less fulfilled.
“In the back of my mind I always had this thought of ‘this is not what I should be doing,’” she says. She decided to take a step back from the industry, move to Los Angeles and give acting a proper go. When the pandemic hit, she was stuck doing acting classes over Zoom, biding her time.
When the audition came for “Superman,” never in a million years did she think she’d land the part.
“It’s such a big movie and I don’t have that much experience,” she says. ‘But I sent my self-tape in, I didn’t really hear anything for a few weeks, and then my managers called me, said that they wanted me to screen test, to do a chemistry read, and then I went in. I was so nervous because when I first started doing self-tapes, everything was during the pandemic so everything was on Zoom. I haven’t been in the room that many times in person and I was really nervous. But the character is all over the place, so I kind of used that nervous energy into the character.”
Sampaio is waiting to see how “Superman” lands — although it already is a box office smash — before committing to her next project, with the hopes that her role will open doors for her.
“I’m not picky. I would do a lot. I would love to do action. I would love to do some kind of spy or Bond girl thing, or do a beautiful romance or a romantic comedy,” she says. “I just love how you just get to do so many different kinds of characters and you get to live so many different lives and that I want to be able to do everything.”
And as she’s learning, all those years modeling do come into play with her new career.
“I feel like where it helped me the most is obviously I’ve gotten very comfortable in front of the camera and doing lingerie shows in front of thousands of people,” Sampaio says. “You can’t get more embarrassed than that, so there’s not a lot that I’m embarrassed of.”
Hair by Ruslan; makeup by Diane Buzzetta