Star Vehicle

Last fall, Martine Gutierrez attended a gala at London’s Natural History Museum dressed solely in black panties and art-handling tape, “I’m naked in the calendar,” she says, referencing the honoree of the evening, Ethan James Green’s 2025 Pirelli Calendar, in which she can be seen laid out against wet sand for the month of May. “I wanted them to see it was all real, no retouching.” We’re speaking weeks after the event—she in her New York apartment, I in mine— and, in an Italian accent, she mentions she’s preparing pasta. It brings to mind Sophia Loren’s adage: “Everything you see I owe to spaghetti.

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It could be said the young actress, new to the scene, is always playing a role. She first made her name in the art world by pointing the camera at herself to present a sliding door of identities. Last year, the Museum of Modern Art acquired three of her self-portraits, in which the actress and artist spins three selves: cover girl, Indigenous woman, and various Aztec deities. In 2018, she was the editrix-in-chief of her own magazine, Indigenous Woman, for which she was the only model, photographer, and writer. This solo mode of working was most challenged by her recent star-turn as Vanesja, the faux-talent agent in Julio Torres’ 2024 series Fantasmas on HBO. “It was difficult to give up the reins of control for both the Pirelli calendar and the show,” she says. “But I saw how much bigger things could be once you surrender.” She remembers the multiple hands on set, everyone working toward something much larger than any single person can accomplish.

Gutierrez, who now goes by the mononymous Martine, has joined a lineage of single-named image makers like Lesley Hornby’s Twiggy and Caroline Cossey’s Tula. Has she relinquished the artist’s control to pursue acting? “Maybe,” she admits with a smile in her voice. “I’m collecting my Girl Scout badges. I’ve got my calendar badge, artist badge, and, eventually, my diamond.” The twinkly badge may allude to her ultimate acting dream: becoming a Bond girl. Is it possible? Martine replies with Audrey Hepburn’s words: “Nothing is impossible. The word itself says, ‘I’m possible.’” Thinking back to the London gala, it’s easy to imagine her stepping off the back of 007’s motorcycle, with nothing to wear but the tape used to package her latest work.

Fashion FERN CEREZO.
Hairstylist SONNY MOLINA at STREETERS using DAVINES.
Makeup artist JEZZ HILL at CLM.