“I don’t really know who I am when I’m not acting,” says Kreeta Salminen

Money asia Crete Salminen in speech returns to the body.

“I portray things best through my body,” says the actor and looks out of the window of a cafe in Kallio at the scenery familiar from childhood in the drizzling rain.

He used to go to that afternoon club behind the Helsinki City Theater as a child, now his 8-year-old daughter goes there.

Salminen says he was a “tricky child”. He made his way through the streets of Kallio with his mother, a former dancer, now a dance researcher Riikka Korppi-Tommolan along as a child by throwing cartwheels.

The mother took the athletic daughter to the legendary circus acrobat Abdeslam Chellaf Langryn circus school, Langry also taught acrobatics at the Theater Academy. In addition, Salminen enjoyed capoeira and dancing.

“I wasn’t into theater as a child, but dance took me completely,” says the person who grew up in a theater family.

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“When you’ve grown up staring at yourself in the mirror as a child, you can be quite hard on yourself even in adulthood. Now the look goes in a gentler direction.”

Strait applied directly from high school to the dance line of Teatterikorkeakoulu and got there on the second try. However, after a year, the study line changed to the line of acting. Despite the fact that on his first attempt at an acting institute, he had a panic attack when the task was to perform a monologue in front of other applicants. He continues to say that the tension before the premiere is terrible.

“You want to go to the theater stage and you don’t want to go at the same time. You get hooked on that excitement.”

Cruelty to one’s own body made rounds at Teatterikorkeakoulu.

“When I was young, the amount of self-flagellation was something horrible. I had a terrible need to know everything right away. I remember how in Teatterikorkea’s acrobatics class I yelled at myself if the half-volt didn’t work right away.”

Salminen I think the body is often wiser than the mind.

A concrete contact with the wisdom of the body happened six years ago, when he was filming All sins series. In the crime drama, she played the mother of a Lestadio family who turns out to be a murderer.

“We spent eight hours filming a very emotional scene in which my character confesses to the murders he committed and tells the reasons behind them.”

It was Salminen’s last shooting day in the series. When the day ended, he said goodbye to the task force and went to the hotel room.

And threw up all night.

“I realized that it was my body’s way of saying goodbye to the role. Even though my mind had realized all along that it’s just a role, the body doesn’t understand it in the same way.”

Regression is particularly important. For example, Salminen goes outdoors, walks or does TRE stress-relieving exercises, or so-called vibration therapy.

The hard training of his youth has left marks on the actor’s body. Last spring, Salmi was diagnosed with osteoarthritis in one hip. Immediately after graduating from the Theater Academy, he rolled his legs and had to leave the title role in the Group Theater Ronja the robber’s daughter -production in 2011. Due to slipping on the grass, the leg broke in several places and was amputated.

However, those entering their forties feel stronger than ever.

“I have found my limbs and my limits better. When you’ve grown up staring at yourself in the mirror as a child, you might be pretty hard on yourself even in adulthood. Now the look goes in a gentler direction.”

A new hobby, skiing, has also taken me in a gentler direction. Through it, he gained a new bodily insight a couple of weeks ago, when the ski instructor described Salminen’s use of his hands as “almost violent.”

“I realized that my body is still in that old mode and the dancer in me is performing.”

Size last year was the quietest of the career for the actor who worked as a freelancer.

“I don’t really know who I am when I’m not acting.”

For Salmi, work is on some level an escape from his own life. In the role, you can simultaneously live someone else’s life and learn something new about humanity.

Although the future of the industry, both theater and camera work, does not look rosy, Salminen is optimistic. The Delta Venus performing arts group consisting of former Teatterikorkea coursemates is an important community for freelancers.

“The older I get, the more I understand how important working together, joy and humor are in this work.”

Those belonging to the group Sara Mellerin, Asta Honkamaa, Rosanna Kempin and Annika Poijärven with Salminen has explored femininity and a new kind of stage aesthetics in a show about drugs, among other things The Betty Show in 2020. Physicality also played an important role in the performance utilizing Buto dance.

In addition to work, daydreaming is the actor’s favorite escape from reality. Dreams are currently focusing on summer and dad Esko Salminen to a cottage in the Turku archipelago.

In April, Kreeta Salminen starts the boating course she has been planning for a long time.