Cristian Solimeno is a restless creative who works in lots of different media. He's a published photographer, a notable UK actor and an award winning film maker who has directed 3 feature films and has a slate of new projects in development. He has a photography studio in Kennington and his work in that area recently culminated in PHOTOGRAPHS OF INVISIBLE THINGS, A photographic book and his first solo exhibition. It was a big show with more than one hundred pieces exploring his street photography work and the hidden things that images reveal.
He also writes films and prose. His first Novel, Red blood on Blue collar will be published soon and his feature script I LOVE YOU FOREVER IT’S OVER is currently being produced by Freedom films and is due to Shoot Summer 2024. Recently he wrote the script for acclaimed short film NEAR, directed by Jassa Ahluwalia, which won Best UK short at the New Renaissance film festival.
Cristian was born and raised in central London. After slipping through the cracks as a teenager, he left school at 16 with no qualifications. While working odd jobs he passed through several youth theatres including the Royal Court, and the Young Vic before finding Youngblood at Riverside Studios where he finally settled and began to find his feet. It was from there that he was first cast in television. At 19 he started his own theatre company with Jesse Lawrence and from one of their own productions got his first agent and then started to work more regularly as a professional. Jesse and Cristian went on to write and perform several plays before turning to film making. Cristian’s first recurring part was on the ITV series Wycliffe but his breakout television role was as the team captain in Footballer’s Wives. His jump into film came with his lead role in the big screen adaptation of Dead Babies, the cult classic Martin Amis novel alongside Olivia Williams and Paul Bettany. Since then Cristian has starred in and played supporting roles in numerous feature films such as Highlander: The Source, Tuesday, Mother Of Tears, Perfect Hideout, DJ, We Still Steal The Old Way and LUCID., and the London based, US crime series GUILT. He will be appearing in The English in 2022, an incredible six part, Western for The BBC and Amazon Studios directed by Hugo Blick and Starring Emily Blunt.
In 2008 he wrote and directed his first feature film, a deconstructed rom-com called This is What it is. After that he paused everything for 2 years to fulfil a lifelong dream and go to LABAN to study contemporary dance, while there he managed to write and direct a short film called LOVE which won multiple awards and was highly acclaimed. In 2011 he wrote and directed his second feature, a psychological thriller called The Glass Man which stars Andy Nyman, James Cosmo and Neve Campell. It sadly got tied up in a bad deal with a US company and has only just been released in the UK.
In 2020 his 3rd feature film, I Made This For You, was released to high praise in the UK. A unique movie which uses unorthodox film making techniques to tell the story of a community trying to prevent a suicide among their own.