When she was younger, Aria Mia Loberti had big dreams. The 29-year-old from Rhode Island loved to dance, sing, and perform, and thought about giving theater a try. But her doubts held her back.
“I was just like, no one’s ever going to want me,” she tells me over coffee in Manhattan. “Because as soon as you disclose anything about yourself that’s different, even if you don’t look different, you’re perceived as different. People don’t want to deal with that.”
Loberti was born with the genetic eye condition achromatopsia, which means she is one of the approximately 6 million Americans who identify as either blind or low vision. So she focused on other goals. She went to college, got her master’s degree, and began working toward her PhD at Penn State University, studying the ancient history of communication. But something wasn’t clicking. Loberti felt restless, and unsure what she was doing with her life.
Then she heard about an open casting call for the Netflix miniseries All the Light We Cannot See. Producers were looking for a woman who was blind or low vision to play the main role of Marie-Laure Leblanc, and Loberti figured she may as well make a tape.
“I got on camera and recorded my take of Marie reading with myself, sent in one take, and just was like, well, that was a fun afternoon,” she recalls. “Maybe I’ll get the courage to do a theater class.”
She got way more than that. Loberti was chosen after a global search to play Marie-Laure in the miniseries, which premiered last month. Critics have been raving over Loberti’s deft portrayal of the character, with The Hollywood Reporter calling her performance “radiant.”
Now, Loberti says, she is just getting started. As one of the few blind or low-vision actors currently working in Hollywood, she’s ready to represent her community both onscreen and off, and already has several other projects lined up, including the forthcoming The Spiderwick Chronicles and others she can’t share with us just yet. And while she has preferences for the characters she plays (no two-dimensional women who are just someone’s girlfriend, she says), she is eager to play characters with full vision as well.
