Stories are central to Hollywood: the power of a narrative, a script, to guide an audience, to breathe life into a history, or to sculpt fiction into a tangible reality. Actors, therefore, are storytellers - through their bodies and actions, they bring these words to life, surrendering their own self to the service of an adopted persona, their own experience affording a vocabulary, to tell another tale. But for Prada, a philosophy centered around a profound interest for real stories, they are people, individual, complex figures that exist in the dichotomy between their roles and their lives.

For the Prada Fall/Winter 2022 menswear campaign, David Sims photographs a triptych of these story-tellers, whose talents have helped shape twenty-first century cinema: Jeff Goldblum, Damson Idris and Rami Malek. These portraits offer fresh perspectives on these world-famous faces, framing themselves within a new narrative.

In juxtaposition with each of David Sims’ portraits, a series of still-life images - apparently paradoxical, capture objects infused with meaning for these actors, keys to uncovering hidden and private memories. Here, these actors play themselves - they expand the campaign to tell their own stories, express their personalities, recount their lives for the camera. In the same fashion as they take on a role, their own personae can become characters, reflecting scripts that are all their own.

Unexpected, even revelatory, these still and moving images unlock and celebrate the personalities behind this trio of individual and distinct characters. These story-tellers tell us the stories that dwell inside each of them.


Campaign credits

Talents: Jeff Goldblum, Damson Idris, Rami Malek
Photography: David Sims
Creative direction: Ferdinando Verderi

About the talents

The American actor Jeff Goldblum has been featured across television and cinema screens since the 1970s, his starring roles in diverse films including The Fly (1986), Jurassic Park (1993), Independence Day (1996) and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) transcending generational limitation.

British-Nigerian actor Damson Idris is a fast-rising talent feted for his transformative and emotionally-complex portrayals in a number of award-winning film and drama, including a captivating turn in the FX crime drama Snowfall.

Oscar, Emmy and Sag winning Rami Malek’s embodiment of musician Freddie Mercury in the 2018 film Bohemian Rhapsody garnered international critical plaudits and awards, as did his starring role as Elliot in the hit TV series Mr. Robot: his ability to entirely inhabit the characters he portrays lends his storytelling an inherent strength, depth and credence.