Being the daughter of actors Antônio Pedro, 81, and Margot Baird, 76, made following an artistic career a natural thing for Ana Baird. It all started when I was a five-year-old girl, enrolled in classical ballet after telling her father that she wanted to be an actress. For him, this was a prerequisite.
Forty-six years later, Ana, 51, delights in her most outstanding work. She gives life to Nicole, a woman victim of fat phobia inside and outside the home, and who finds herself shrouded in insecurities and misunderstandings in “Um Lugar ao Sol” (Globo), by Lícia Manzo, which currently occupies prime time at Globo.
Baird had been away from soap operas for 30 years when the invitation arrived, “around 1915, before the pandemic”, jokes the actress in a telephone conversation. With a lot of sympathy and laughs at all times, the actress says that she even had doubts when she saw the message from Maurício Farias, artistic director of the plot, on her cell phone.
“It was a kind of thing, my God. Wow! At the time of the championship… Crazy. Very good, I didn’t expect it”, he says in an excited tone and without any pauses in his speech. She had even sent her updated data to casting producer Andrea Imperatore, but she didn’t know what project she was working on.
The invitation was obviously accepted. Came meetings with the cast, readings of text, and suddenly: the pandemic. Ana Baird says it was another madness, but she also sees positive points in the stoppage that took production by surprise in early 2020. “It was good to calm my expectations, I had more time to understand this”, he says
In the end, the recordings lasted for more than a year, going through two periods of stoppage due to the worsening of the pandemic, and many sanitary protocols, which even changed a few times during this period. For Baird, a situation that brought the actors closer together. “We just lived that.”
When asked about the partnerships formed on set, the actress can only praise Alinne Moraes, 38, and Andrea Beltrão, 58. The three are sisters in the plot, who live a very typical relationship of brothers, with a lot of complicity, but also with a lot of friction. The father of this trio is Santiago, played by José de Abreu, 75.
And a lot of the friction between Nicole and her family revolves around her weight. If, on the one hand, Barbara (Alinne Moraes) embarrasses her with reproaches about her eating habits, on the other, she is also the one who defends her father’s sister, who classifies her as lazy and unwilling to lose weight.
Baird says he lent Nicole a lot of his experiences, as he has the same “character size” and also many of the consequences that fatphobia leaves. And for the actress, this appears in the form of the outbursts and attacks that the character has, mainly, against her family members.
“Nicole is critical, speaks things, gets to be rude at times. But it’s because of a painful place that she has. I thought it was very important that the character bring this pain. People have to know the impact of what they say. people practice fatphobia under the pretext of helping, but that doesn’t help.”
“People say ‘I want what’s best for you,’ but no! That’s not how you’re going to help me,” he continues. “It’s not by wanting me to change my body that you’re going to help me. Is there a health issue? Yes. Some fat people have health problems, but not all of them. So putting the fat person in a place of illness is the question.”
And to show that fat is not sick, the actress had the help of costume designer Antônio Medeiros, who guaranteed her “bafônicos looks”. “Nicole dresses really well and that helps a lot. Even though she goes through all that, there’s some place of acceptance there inside her. Which for me was really cool to show. Show my body, show my legs, show who I am , this is my body and everything is fine.”
Despite this, Baird says Nicole “is still going to suffer a bit” in the plot of “A Place in the Sun”. And the turnaround will only come when the character starts a romance with Paco (Otávio Müller), a voice actor, like her, but who, unlike her character, accepts her body very well, even though he’s overweight.
THEATER, THERAPY AND SIDE B
Despite having started her “preparation” to be an actress at the age of five, with classical ballet lessons, Ana Baird made her debut at seven, in the play “Os Saltimbanco”. His sister Alice Borges, then 11 years old, was there at his side. But before that, the two were already onstage, in the aisle, in the audience and in all parts of the theater.
Living with her father, she says that she went to the theater on nights when he had no one to leave her and her sister. And even indoors, she was surrounded by the theater. There were constant rehearsals, readings in the living room, and costume glitter everywhere, even inside the fridge. “A crazy thing,” she says.
The soap operas, however, were few: “Final Feliz” (Globo, 1982), when I was between 12 and 13 years old, and then “Que Rei Sou Eu” (Globo, 1989) and “Sex of the Angels” (Globo, 1989 -1990), already around 19 years old. Then came a 30-year hiatus, where the actress focused on theater, music and even gave herself the right to “kick the bucket”.
“I feel like I wasn’t in this place [fazendo novelas] because I didn’t allow myself to be. And maybe the world wasn’t ready either to have a fat woman in the spotlight. I don’t have a single explanation for all this time without making novels”, says Baird, who, however, did not stop working in the art world.
In addition to the plays and songs, she says that she has always been curious about spiritual and self-knowledge issues, which led her to major in thetahealing, being today a therapist and instructor of this type of meditation, and to do a birth chart. “I got involved with a lot. Sometimes out of necessity, sometimes to open my fan.”
“Being an actress who hasn’t been in the spotlight for many years can be challenging. So much so that there came a time that I gave up. I kicked the bucket, moved to the mountains and opened a bar, called Lado B, spent two years working there. It was a success. , but it was an insane job. It’s cool, but boy, what a job,” he recalls.
Analyzing this period, Baird says it was painful and very good. “I had a detachment to look at my career, the success I projected, it came and went. In the end, I didn’t give up on my artistic career, but on an expectation I had on the profession. I found acceptance, I was calm, at peace, happy “.
Today, Baird remains in Nova Friburgo, in the mountainous region of Rio, but no longer on Side B. She lives with her husband, musician Ricardo Ferraz, with whom she has been with them for over ten years, and the couple’s two cats. He is looking for funding to release his play, “Chave de Cadeia”, and expects new opportunities, maybe new soap operas.
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I am currently a news writer for News Bulletin247 where I mostly cover sports news. I have always been interested in writing and it is something I am very passionate about. In my spare time, I enjoy reading and spending time with my family and friends.
