Super nova Nicole Trunfio

March 14th, 2010

Nicole Trunfio is playing with my emotions. We’re due to meet for an after-work drink and, at the 10-minutes-late mark, I call her. “Oh,” she gasps down the line, “I haven’t been told about that. I’m in the city.”
As if it proves anything, I start reading what’s written in my diary, but she interrupts before I get too pompous: “I’m joking, darl,” she giggles. “I’m just around the corner. I’ll be there in five.”
True to her word, five minutes later, the Aussie model strides in wearing a buttock-skimming black dress, still visibly amused at her gag. While I trot to keep up with her super-long stride, she makes a beeline for a table in the centre of the room, clearly not feeling the need to hide from any possible attention.
Trunfio became a well-known face when she won series three of Network Ten’s Search for a Supermodel in 2002, her star rising higher still when she took third place in the international version of the show. Five years ago, she moved to New York to fully embrace her career.
When we meet, Trunfio (who turns 24 this week) has returned to Australia for the relaunch of Chadstone, in Melbourne’s south east, which recently emerged from its chrysalis as the largest shopping centre in the southern hemisphere. “It’s really impressive,” she says, as if she’s never seen anything like it. “Karl Lagerfeld designed a bag especially, and they flew in the original Gucci bag made for Jackie Onassis. It was spectacular.”
It’s clear that, though it’s a work trip and only a week long, she’s had a ball. “It feels like a breath of health, as soon as I get here,” she sighs theatrically. “Like my body comes alive again.”
Trunfio grew up in Merredin, near Perth, one of four siblings in an extended Italian family. “We used to make salami, and tomato sauce for pasta,” she recalls. “My dad has six brothers and a sister, and they have huge families. It was always more about that than friends.”
It’s an idyllic image, but scrape a little deeper and it turns out things weren’t all rose-tinted. As a kid, her gangly frame, pretty face and good grades made her a target for bullies. “Kids can be really mean,” she says, quietly. “I used to come home crying a lot. It’s hard going through that.”
With her looks more a curse than a blessing, it never occurred to Trunfio that she might one day be a model.
“Mum was a hairdresser, Dad was a mechanic, and we grew up with not a lot of money, so all I knew was that I’d like to have more,” she says. “The highest earning job I knew was a lawyer, so I thought I’d do that. If not, I’d be a pro dirt bike rider or work in a video store. I’d love to be around movies all day, telling people which ones to watch, and eating popcorn.”
However, while on a shopping trip with her elder sister, Louise, Trunfio was approached by a model scout and asked to enter a competition. “I was laughing – I had no interest,” she says. “I’d experienced enough bitchiness at school, without going into an industry that’s all about beauty.”
But, convinced by her family, she entered and duly won the competition. Following Search for a Supermodel, Trunfio moved to Sydney, then headed Stateside. She loves the hustle and bustle of the Big Apple, but says there’s no place like home. “I miss the food here, it’s incredible. I miss Milo, the bread, the accents, the smell of the air…”
Off the runway, she’s realised a better way to immerse herself in film than at a video store. “Acting’s my passion,” she says, explaining that she’s just completed a four-week stint at NIDA, and has been studying in the US with Susan Batson, coach of Nicole Kidman. “I know that, as I’m a model, people might be like, ‘Yeah, right,’ but that’s what I love.
“I love the realness of Cate Blanchett and Toni Collette, who play broken down characters without a facade. That’s something I’m interested in because I see [so much artificiality] in my job.”
She had a small part in Two Fists, One Heart last year and will start filming a vampire movie this year, but Trunfio’s focus now is on learning the craft and working on a script with a friend.
“I want to make sure everything I do is right, that I’m true to myself,” she says. “Anyway, I’m still enjoying modelling, so I’m in no rush.”
source: dailytelegraph.com.au