It was daunting for Italian actress Sara Lazzaro to portray Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, in the film "The Young Messiah," because many people consider her as a religious "icon."
"How do you play an 'icon'? You don't. You can't," Lazzaro tells the Gospel Herald. "All I could do when portraying Mary was to focus on leaning on the one thing we do have in common: I am also a young woman. I am not a mother [yet], but still I asked myself, 'What would I do if I were the mother of this child? How would I go about this journey knowing what she and her family had already been through and unsure of what was awaiting for them ahead?'"
"The Young Messiah," a new faith-based film about the struggles of Jesus' childhood, is now available for purchase on digital HD and is now available on DVD and Blu-Ray.
The film follows Jesus' journey from Egypt to Nazareth and on to Jerusalem, where He would embrace His true destiny as the world's Saviour. There is little account in the Bible how Joseph and Mary felt about Jesus' journey, but director Cyrus Nowrasteh finally tackled it in the film.
Lazzaro says it was important for her to understand Mary's "humanity" to provide a compelling portrayal and make the audience relate to her.
"She was a woman, and yes, possibly filled with all the heartaches, love, fears that all mothers, all around the world, face every day. For some reason it made me feel closer to her. I felt a more personal connection," says the actress. "I felt the need to strip down, to rely and access my instincts, my woman nature. Because that is what she is, what she contains, universally. "
Lazzaro further explains that Mary had a "dual" role to play, because she was Jesus' Earthly mother, and yet at the same time, Jesus is not "her own."
"It's a constant coexistence of contrasting feelings, of layers and density that had to fill each silence, each word and each action that was going to take place," she says.
