Life & Work with Gabriel Quintella of Los Angeles

Today we’d like to introduce you to Gabriel Quintella.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Gabriel Quintella is an Italian-Brazilian actor who moved alone from Brazil to Los Angeles in 2021 with no family, no shortcuts, and a very clear vision of the career he wanted to build. Born on December 21, 1997, Gabriel started his professional acting journey at 19 years old in theater, where he performed in more than 15 professional plays before transitioning into film and television.

One of the biggest challenges early on was language. Gabriel never had formal English education or accent training. He studied English entirely on his own and became obsessed with mastering the American accent because he didn’t want to be limited to stereotypical “Latino” or “Italian” roles. He wanted the freedom to portray universal characters and American leads. Years later, that persistence paid off — today he regularly plays American leading roles across film, television, and the fast-growing vertical drama space.

His breakout moment came with the feature film You Can Only Blink Once, where he portrayed the street gangster Tommy Machado — a character he describes as “somewhere between Tyler Durden from Fight Club and Heath Ledger’s Joker.” The performance earned Gabriel Best Actor nominations at festivals around the world and ultimately won him two Best Actor awards: one at the FICIMAD in Madrid, Spain, and another at Film Invasion Los Angeles. The recognition established him as one of the emerging international actors to watch in the indie film scene.

Since then, Gabriel has worked consistently across feature films, shorts, television, and digital platforms. Throughout his career, he has appeared in eight feature films, leading five of them, while also participating in acclaimed short films that traveled through the festival circuit and received praise for his performances.

International audiences also began recognizing him through the Netflix series Summer Heat, where he co-led the show portraying the heartthrob professional surfer Léo Pororoca. The series reached Netflix’s Top 10 in the United States and several countries around the world, introducing Gabriel to a much wider audience.

More recently, he has become one of the recognizable faces in the booming vertical drama market, leading more than 12 vertical series so far and building a loyal fanbase internationally through both the platforms and his social media presence. That momentum has already opened doors for filming opportunities in countries like China and Italy, as the format continues expanding globally.

Gabriel says his athletic background has also shaped him deeply as an actor. Outside of acting, he’s passionate about surfing, skateboarding, MMA, jiu-jitsu, soccer, running, climbing, and outdoor adventures — disciplines that helped him develop both physicality and mental resilience for demanding roles and stunt-heavy projects.

His career has continued accelerating over the last year. Gabriel recently returned from Atlanta after shooting the feature film Love Savior, where he plays a guardian angel who falls in love with the human he is assigned to protect, ultimately dooming himself by breaking Heaven’s rules. Around the same time, he booked his first Network TV role on the NBC/Peacock series The Hunting Party, portraying Rory Losquadro, a bodybuilding influencer who becomes one of the serial killer’s victims.

At the same time, Gabriel has been consistently getting callbacks and opportunities with major casting directors and producers connected to projects from networks and studios including Netflix, Prime Video, and productions within the Taylor Sheridan television universe.

For Gabriel, the journey has never really been about overnight success. It’s been about persistence, reinvention, and trusting intuition. Moving countries alone, learning a language independently, building an acting career from scratch in Hollywood, and constantly jumping from set to set taught him that talent matters — but resilience matters just as much.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Not at all. The road was honestly very difficult in the beginning. I didn’t come from a rich family and when I moved alone from Brazil to Los Angeles in 2021, I had almost no money, no friends, and no family here to help me.

I worked long 12+ hour shifts doing DoorDash, Uber Eats, and other jobs just to survive, pay rent, and afford acting classes with teachers like Larry Moss, Ivana Chubbuck, and Howard Fine. There were moments my bank account was negative, I lived in a house with 12 people sleeping on a couch, and at one point I even had to sleep inside my car, which had holes in the roof, so winter nights were brutal.

I promised my parents I would never ask them for financial help because of the love and respect I have for them, and because the currency exchange from Brazil to the U.S. is extremely expensive. I wanted to prove to myself that I could build this on my own.

One of the hardest moments was suffering my first car accident while working DoorDash in Compton, which left me in a wheelchair for a period of time. There were even days I had to ask restaurants for leftovers just so I could eat.

But looking back now, all those struggles built my resilience. They made me appreciate every opportunity even more — from winning Best Actor awards to working on Netflix, NBC/Peacock, and leading more than 12 vertical dramas today.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
As my former acting coach Larry Moss used to say: “You have to have a reason for singing a song — not just because it’s a job, but because there’s something emotionally alive inside of it that excites you.” That idea stayed with me forever.

I was heavily educated through Method Acting and character psychology, and for me acting has never been about pretending — it’s about understanding human behavior. Acting taught me that words can lie, but behavior never does. My craft is really the study of people: psychology, neuroscience, body language, trauma, desire, fear, ego, love, survival — all the invisible things that make us behave the way we do.

The thing about when people say “Method Acting” they really don’t understand what the method itself is. The method is an invitation to find out for yourself what will unlock your imagination in the most specific and interesting way. And it might be going hungry for two weeks, it might be sleeping in a jail cell, it might be reading 25 books about it, it might be wearing a weird headpiece. It’s not a rule or just “oh he becomes the character”. It’s about how to unlock what’s in here, within you, and bring it forward. And that’s what the greats do.

What fascinates me most is that every person carries an entire universe of experiences, contradictions, and emotional scars behind their eyes. I think that’s why I became an actor. I genuinely love life and human beings, and acting allows me to explore lives, emotions, and perspectives beyond my own. Life feels too short for me to experience only one version of existence.

I’m extremely picky with the roles I choose because I need to feel curiosity and emotional excitement toward the character. If I’m not deeply invested, the audience won’t be either. To me, acting should feel spontaneous, alive, unpredictable, and truthful. The best performances happen when an actor stops “performing” and simply behaves truthfully under imaginary circumstances.

I also believe actors become emotional athletes. The process can be painful and emotionally exhausting because it forces you to confront yourself at the deepest level possible. But I find beauty in that discomfort, because curiosity lives there. Acting has forced me to know myself more honestly than anything else ever has.

Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc?
Absolutely. I’m deeply passionate about acting, psychology, and human behavior, so most of the resources that shaped me come from those worlds.

One of the most important books for me is The Intent to Live by Larry Moss. That book changed the way I see both acting and people. It’s not just an acting book — it’s an immersion into psychology, emotional truth, and human behavior.

Respect for Acting by Uta Hagen taught me not only technique through her exercises, but also the importance and responsibility of our profession as storytellers. Meisner on Acting by Sanford Meisner completely transformed my understanding of presence and reaction — the idea that acting is truly reacting.

Fine on Acting by Howard Fine taught me how to become a more self-sufficient artist and understand that every character already exists somewhere inside of us. Stella Adler also had a huge impact on me through her books and recorded classes, especially her obsession with specificity and fully understanding a character’s world, history, and environment in detail.

And then there’s Lee Strasberg, whose work with Sense Memory and Affective Memory fascinated me deeply because of how connected it is to real emotion, memory, and neuroscience. Of course, all of these teachers were influenced by Konstantin Stanislavski, who really laid the foundation for modern acting as we know it.

Outside of acting books, I spend a lot of time listening to neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy podcasts because I think acting is ultimately the study of human beings. The more I understand people, emotions, trauma, desire, and behavior, the better artist — and person — I become.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm10739711/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eugabrielquintella/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@gabriellbq

Image Credits
1. Marcos Daniel Ferreira
2. Borys Nezhurko
3. Deivid Eugenio
4. Efe Tuncay
5. Efe Tuncay
6. Efe Tuncay
7. Marcus Stokes
8. Matt Marcheski