Yes, you just recieved a Profile on Monica Bellucci, in regard to her featured role in
this season's blockbuster film, "Matrix Reloaded".

But, I must confess that I had merely thought of Bellucci as a very bright, beautiful, talented actress with a promising carreer ahead of her. Then I stumbled on a well researched article from the edge of the earth, Singapore, that after framing Monica as the next prospective Academy Award Contender from Italy, then goes on to give us a profile of all past Italian Contenders. For Italian Movie buffs a must!!

At the Academy Awards, 10 Italian-born performers have been contenders in the acting categories, and three of them have won: Anna Magnani as Best Actress for 1955’s The Rose Tattoo, Sophia Loren as Best Actress for 1961’s Two Women and Roberto Benigni as Best Actor for 1998’s Life Is Beautiful.

The other seven losing contenders have been actresses Valentina Cortese and Marisa Pavan, and actors Vittorio De Sica, Vincent Gardenia, Giancarlo Giannini, Marcello Mastroianni and Masimo Troisi.
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Buzz: Oscar Gold: Oscar Italian

Daniel Chan
The New Straits Times Press
May 15, 2003

Italy has often served up screen bombshells, and the latest to sizzle on film is Monica Bellucci and the question is whether she can strike Oscar gold like Sophia Loren or will she be bypassed like Gina Lollobrigida and Claudia Cardinale.

Since the hey-days of Lollobrigida in the 1950s, Loren in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and Cardinale in the 1960s, there has not been an Italian movie goddess of their calibre until now.

Bellucci first gained international attention as the victimised war widow in 2000’s Malena but it is only this year that she’s finally stamping her presence in global cinema through war actioner Tears Of The Sun and now in science-fictioner The Matrix Reloaded (which opens today in the US and Malaysia).

In Tears Of The Sun, she evokes admiration as a humanitarian doctor in war-torn Nigeria, while in The Matrix Reloaded she’s delightful as the villainous Persephone who will appear again in The Matrix Revolutions finale come Nov.

These Hollywood actioners are not Oscar material in the acting categories, but Bellucci is likely to be offered better vehicles. Indeed, next year she will be seen in two meatier roles – as persecuted prostitute Mary Magadalene in The Passion (Mel Gibson’s biopic on the final hours of Jesus Christ who’s played by Jim Caviezel) and the title role in another biopic, Lucretia Borgia, that enchantress of Italy’s infamous Borgia family.

Born on Sept 30, 1968 in Citta di Castello in Umbria, Italy, the daughter of a trucking company owner, Bellucci took up law at the University of Perugia but after two years dropped out, at age 18, to pursue a modelling career.

That took her to Milan, one of Europe’s top fashion centres, and she was signed up by the prestigious Elite modelling agency. Such exposure led to her screen debut, at age 22, in 1990 Italian film Vita coi figli.

During the 1990s, Bellucci had mainly supporting roles in first Italian, and then French films. Interestingly, her first taste of a Hollywood film was a humbling experience, as one of the three topless vampire brides who seduced lawyer Jonathan Harker in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula – Harker was played by Keanu Reeves who has since risen to superstardom, thanks largely to his heroic Neo in The Matrix trilogy.

Bellucci’s first French film, 1996’s L’ Appartement proved to be a turning point in her career, and personal life. For her role as the unwitting object of desire of a visitor (played by French actor Vincent Cassel) who goes to the extent of hiding in her apartment, she received a nomination for Most Promising Actress at the Cesars, France’s own Oscars.

She and Cassel became lovers, and they married in 1999. Cassel, born on Nov 23, 1996 in Paris, is the son of veteran actor Jean-Pierre Cassel. Vincent and Bellucci have since acted together in four more films, namely, 1996 comedy As You Want Me, 1997 actioner Dobermann, 2000’s semi-factual fantasy Brotherhood Of The Wolf (as a mysterious courtesan) and 2002’s avant-garde drama Irreversible (in which Bellucci figured in a controversial rape scene), and will next co-star as the leads of 2004 crime story Agents Secrets.

Her other notable credits have been 2000’s Under Suspicion (as tycoon Gene Hackman’s estranged trophy wife) and 2002’s Asterix And Obelix: Mission Cleopatra (as the Egyptian queen, in this adaptation of the popular comicbook).

At the Academy Awards, 10 Italian-born performers have been contenders in the acting categories, and three of them have won: Anna Magnani as Best Actress for 1955’s The Rose Tattoo, Sophia Loren as Best Actress for 1961’s Two Women and Roberto Benigni as Best Actor for 1998’s Life Is Beautiful.

The other seven losing contenders have been actresses Valentina Cortese and Marisa Pavan, and actors Vittorio De Sica, Vincent Gardenia, Giancarlo Giannini, Marcello Mastroianni and Masimo Troisi.

Magnani was 47 when she triumphed, while Loren was 27, and Benigni was 46. Significantly, Loren and Benigni were two of the only three performers to win Oscars for non-English speaking roles – the other was US-born Robert De Niro who won Best Supporting Actor for 1974’s The Godfather Part II – and all three happen to be for characters who speak Italian!

Taking these factors into consideration, it means that Bellucci, now 34, has about a decade to come up with an Oscar-worthy performance, and also that she would have better chances in films of her native tongue.

Let’s take a closer look at the careers of these Italians, ladies first.

Valentina Cortese was up for Best Supporting Actress for 1974’s Day For Night (as a fading, alcoholic actress).

Born on Jan 1, 1924 in Milan, Italy, she made her screen debut in 1940’s Orizzonte dipinto and has since chalked up appearances in about 90 films.

She was especially good in the 1947 version of Les Miserables (portraying both female lead characters, Fantine and Cosette), 1949’s Thieves Highway (as a truck driver’s mistress), 1951’s The House On Telegraph Hill (as young woman pursued by a killer) and 1972’s factual The Assassination Of Trotsky (as the wife of exiled Russian Revolution leader Leon Trotsky).

Cortese, who turned 79 earlier this year, was married to American actor Richard Basehart from 1951 to 1960 and they had a son.

Sophia Loren won Best Actress for 1961’s Two Women (as a mother who, along with her daughter, were gang-raped by Allied soldiers during World War II) and was subsequently up for Best Actress again for 1964’s Marriage Italian-Style (as prostitute who tries to get her lover Marcello Mastroianni to marry her).

She is the most successful Italian actress at the Academy Awards, also by virtue of her having received a Honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement in March 1991 (when she was merely 56).

Born Sophia Villani Scicolone on Sept 20, 1924 in Rome, Italy, she’s the illegitimate child of Romilda Villani and Riccardo Scicolone, and grew up in poverty in the slums of Pozzuoli, just outside Naples.

With her mother’s support, Sophia participated in beauty contests from age 14 and often won consolation prizes. Her fortunes changed in 1939 when, at a beauty contest in which Italian film producer Carlo Ponti was one of the judges, she impressed Ponti who promptly signed her to a film contract, sent her to drama classes, and groomed her into international stardom.

In her over half-century career since her screen debut as an extra in 1950’s Il voto, Loren (the ‘Lo’ is a tribute of sorts to Lollobrigida) has acted in over 90 films and telemovies, her latest being 2002’s Between Strangers.

At her homeland’s David DiDonatello Awards, she has won Best Actress five times, for 1959’s The Black Orchid (as a criminal’s widow romanced by a bumbling businessman), the abovesaid Two Women, 1963’s Yesterday, Today And Tomorrow (in triple roles as Italian women of different social status, with Marcello Mastroianni also in triple roles), the abovesaid Marriage Italian-Style, and 1969’s Sunflower (as woman who searches for her lost lover, played by Mastroianni).

Loren, now 68, has long been married to Ponti (who’s 22 years her senior and is now 90), and they have two grown-up sons, Eduardo and Carlo Ponti Jr.

Anna Magnani won Best Actress for 1955’s The Rose Tattoo (as Sicilian widow who finds love with an oafish truck driver who’s remindful of her late husband) and was then up for the same category again for 1957’s Wild Is The Wind (as the mail-order bride of a Nevada rancher).

Born on March 7, 1908 in Rome, she’s the illegitimate child of Marina Magnani and an unknown father often said to be from Alexandria, Egypt, and was raised in poverty by her maternal grandmother in a slum area of the Italian capital.

After some education at a convent school, Magnani enrolled at Rome’s Academy Of Dramatic Art and made a living by singing bawdy songs in seedy nightclubs. She made her screen debut with a bit role in 1928’s Scampolo.

In her 45-year screen career until 1972’s Fellini’s Roma, her other notable roles include 1941’s Teresa Venerdi (in the title role, the film was directed by Vittorio De Sica), 1945’s Open City (as pregnant widow killed by Germans), 1947’s L’Onorevole Angelina (as tenement resident who rallies her neighbours), 1948’s Amore (as peasant who believes her unborn child is Jesus Christ), and 1959’s The Fugitive Kind (as frustrated wife romanced by wandering hobo Marlon Brando, based on the stage play by Tennessee Williams who had earlier authored The Rose Tattoo with Magnani in mind).

Magnani, who passed away at age 65 on Sept 26, 1973, was married to film-maker Goffredo Alessandro (their 14-year union was annulled in 1950) and during that time, had a son out of wedlock with actor Massimo Serato (when her son became stricken with polio, she patiently cared for him).

Marisa Pavan was up for Best Supporting Actress for 1955’s The Rose Tattoo (as the rebellious daughter of a widow played by Anna Magnani).

Born Marisa Pierangeli on June 19, 1932 in Cagliari at Sardinia, Italy, her tragic twin sister Pier Angeli was also an actress.

Pavan made her screen debut in 1952’s What Price Glory? in the role of a sweet village girl, and has appeared in merely 13 films. Still, her notable roles include 1954’s Drum Beat (as a Native American in love with cowboy hero Alan Ladd), 1956’s The Man In The Grey Flannel Suit (as Gregory Peck’s illegitimate daughter), 1959’s Solomon And Sheba (with Gina Lollobrigida as Sheba) and 1973’s A Slightly Pregnant Man (with Marcelo Mastroianni).

Pier Angeli, whose real name was Anna Maria Pierangeli, committed suicide on Sept 10, 1971, aged 39.

Pavan, who will be 71 next month, had married, divorced and re-married French actor Jean-Pierre Aumont.

And now, for the gentlemen.

Roberto Benigni won Best Actor for 1998’s Life Is Beautiful (as a waiter who, along with his wife and their young son, are sent to a Nazi concentration camp where he tries to shield his son from the horrors of the Holocaust). Born on Oct 27, 1952 in Tuscany, Italy, his father was a farmer, carpenter and bricklayer, and during World War II, a prisoner at the Nazi’s dreaded Bergen-Belsen concentration camp – indeed, his father’s wartime experiences served as the basis and inspiration for Life Is Beautiful which Benigni co-wrote (with Vincenzo Cerami), also directed and produced.

Life Is Beautiful set a then new record for a non-English film when it was Oscar-nominated in seven categories, and won three, including Best Foreign Language Film and Best Musical Score (by Nicola Piovani). Benigni was also a contender for Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. And by winning Best Actor, he became merely the second performer to direct himself to Oscar glory; the first to achieve that feat was Laurence Olivier for 1948’s Hamlet.

It’s also interesting to note that Benigni was merely the fifth Best Actor for a comedic role, after Clark Gable (who won for 1934’s It Happened One Night), James Stewart (for 1940’s The Philadelphia Story), Lee Marvin (for 1965’s Cat Ballou) and Richard Dreyfuss (for 1977’s The Goodbye Girl). Remember that the next time you place your bets on an Oscar pool.

Anyway, Benigni made his screen debut in 1977’s Berlinguer ti voglio bene and in his 21 films to date, he has directed about a third of them, including his latest, the 2002 version of Pinocchio (a big hit in Italy, a flop elsewhere), and established himself as Italy’s most beloved comedian.

Benigni, now 50, married Nicoletta Braschi in 1991. Born on Aug 10, 1960, Braschi made her screen debut in Benigni’s 1983 comedy Tumi Turbi and she has appeared in all the films he directed except 1984’s Nothing Left To Do But Cry.

Vittorio De Sica was up for Best Supporting Actor for 1957’s A Farewell To Arms (as a cynical Italian army officer during World War I).

Born on July 7, 1902 in Sora, Italy, he grew up in poverty in Naples, started out as an office clerk to support his family, and went on to become a popular actor and, more importantly, as one of Italy’s greatest film-makers.

As an actor, he made his screen debut at age 15 in 1917’s The Clemenceau Affair and appeared in 157 films and telemovies until 1974’s Blood For Dracula.

And as a director, he helmed 35 films, from 1939’s Red Roses to 1974’s The Voyage. He also wrote 17 films and produced eight films.

At the Academy Awards, two of his post-war Italian neo-realism films, 1946’s Shoeshine and 1948’s The Bicycle Thief were bestowed special Oscars for best non-English film before Best Foreign Language Film was introduced in 1956. Featuring non-professional actors, Shoeshine was about two shoeshine boys, and The Bicycle Thief concerned a father-and-son relationship.

Subsequently, De Sica won Best Foreign Language Film twice, for the abovesaid Yesterday, Today And Tomorrow (with his favourite pairing of Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren) and 1971’s The Garden Of The Finzi-Continis (a provocative study of anti-Semitism in Fascist Italy).

His other outstanding directorial credits have been 1952’s Umberto D (a sad, troubling drama about old age and loneliness), the abovesaid Two Women (directing Loren to Oscar glory) and also the abovesaid Marriage Italian-Style (directing Loren to another Oscar nod).

De Sica passed away on Nov 13, 1974, aged 72. He was survived by his second wife, Spanish actress Maria Mercader who had been his companion since 1942.

Vincent Gardenia was up for Best Supporting Actor for 1973’s Bang The Drum Slowly (as a gritty baseball manager) and 1987’s Moonstruck (as the straying father of a young widow played by Cher who won Best Actress for the role).

Born Vincente Scognamiglio on Jan 7, 1922 in Naples, Italy, his family moved to the US when he was little and he his first stage performance at age five in New York but became a professional actor only when in his mid-30s.

He made his screen debut in 1945’s The House On 92nd Street and appeared in over 50 films and telemovies, his final credit being 1981’s The Super. Early on he was often cast as criminals and cops, and he was equally adept at portraying businessman types and family patriarchs.

On Broadway, he won a Tony for the 1971 staging of Neil Simon’s The Prisoner Of Second Avenue (as a suddenly unemployed executive who has a nervous breakdown, but when it was filmed in 1975 the role was taken by Jack Lemmon).

And on the small screen, Gardenia and co-star Hume Cronyn both won Emmys for their roles as nursing home buddies in 1989 telemovie Age-Old Friends.

Gardenia passed away on Dec 9, 1992, aged 70.

Giancarlo Giannini was up for Best Actor for 1976’s Seven Beauties (as a thug who endures humiliation in a Nazi concentration camp in order to survive).

Born on Aug 1, 1942 in La Spezia, Italy, he studied electronic engineering and then trained at the Rome Academy Of Drama.

He made his screen debut in 1965’s Libido and has since appeared in over 110 films and telemovies, with his latest role being that of a family patriarch in the forthcoming 2003 release The Heart Is Everywhere.

Seven Beauties was directed by Lina Wertmuller who was Oscar-nominated for Best Director, the first and only time a woman film-maker has been so honored. Giannini has starred in most of the films by Wertmuller (who was born in 1928).

In his homeland’s David DiDonatello Awards, Giannini has been well-appreciated, winning Best Actor thrice (for 1984’s Picone Sent Me, 1996’s Celluloide and 2002’s I Love You, Eugenio) and also Best Supporting Actor (for 1994’s Like Two Crocodiles), but not for his finest role in Seven Beauties.

Giannini, now 60, may well be in Oscar contention again. From his enduring marriage since 1967 to Livia Giampalmo, they have two sons, Lorenzo (born 1967) and actor Adriano Giannini (born 1971).

Marcello Mastroianni was up for Best Actor for 1962’s Divorce – Italian Style (as impoverished Sicilian nobleman who tries to murder his wife), 1977’s A Special Day (as homosexual radio announcer attracted to housewife Sophia Loren) and 1987’s Dark Eyes (as wealthy but unfulfilled playboy).

Undoubtedly Italy’s finest actor, he has won Best Actor at his homeland’s David DiDonatello Awards (thrice, if belatedly, for 1986’s Ginger And Fred, the abovesaid Dark Eyes and 1996’s According To Pereira), at Britain’s Baftas (twice, for the abovesaid Divorce – Italian Style and the following year’s Yesterday, Today And Tomorrow), at France’s Cannes (twice, for 1970’s Jealousy, Italian Style and Dark Eyes), and at the Golden Globe (once, for Divorce – Italian Style). In Jealousy, Italian Style, Mastroianni and Giancarlo Giannini are buddies vying for the love of flower seller Monica Vitti.

Thus, the least the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences could have done was to bestow Mastroianni a Honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement well before he passed away, at age 73, on Dec 19, 1996.

Born Marcello Vincenzo Domenico Mastroianni on Sept 28, 1923 in Fontana Liri, Italy, to poor peasants, he was working as a draughtsman during World War II when he was captured and sent to a Nazi labour camp, but then escaped and spent the rest of the war as a fugitive who found sanctuary in an attic in Venice.

After the war, he worked as a clerk in the accounting department of a British film company’s Rome office, and began acting with a group of university actors.

He made his screen debut as an extra in 1938’s Marionette and in his prolific career, appeared in 157 films, until 1997’s Voyage To The Beginning Of The World. Carving a likeable screen persona as an urban, open-minded European, he enjoyed plum roles in some of the best films by Italy’s greatest film-maker Federico Fellini, especially in 1960’s La Dolce Vita (as disillusioned tabloid journalist) and 1963’s 8 ½ (as creatively burnt-out film director).

Mastroianni, who was married to Flora Carabella from 1950 until his death, fathered a child in 1972 out of wedlock with French actress Catherine Deneuve – a daughter, Chiara Mastroianni who has followed their footsteps into acting.

Massimo Troisi was up for Best Actor for 1995’s Il Postino (as a soft-spoken village postman who establishes a friendship with an exiled Chilean poet).

Born on Feb 19, 1953 in Naples, Troisi started his acting career at age 15 in the theatre, and in 1969 founded a theatre group with two others.

He first became popular on the small screen, through two TV series from 1976 to 1979, called Non Stop and Luna Park. This led to his screen debut in 1981’s I’m Starting From Three, a comedy which he also wrote and directed.

Subsequently, he acted in a dozen more films, four of which he also directed, and four of which he also authored, including 1984 comedy Nothing Left To Do But Cry which he collaborated with Roberto Benigni.

Troisi unexpectedly passed away from a heart attack on June 4, 1994, aged 41, shortly after acting in Il Postino. As such, his Oscar nod was posthumous and he was merely the second to be so honoured; the first was England-born Peter Finch who, uniquely, posthumously won Best Actor for 1976’s Network.