Marcello Mastroianni (original) (raw)

• Biography
• Awards
• Trivia

Marcello Mastroianni(1924-1996)

• Actor
• Producer
• Additional Crew

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One Hundred and One Nights (1995)

Marcello Mastroianni was born in Fontana Liri, Italy in 1924, but soon his family moved to Turin and then Rome. During WW2 he was sent to a German prison camp, but he managed to escape and hide in Venice. He debuted in films as an extra inMarionette (1939), then started working for the Italian department of "Eagle Lion Films" in Rome and joined a drama club, where he was discovered by directorLuchino Visconti. In 1957 Visconti gave him the starring part in hisFyodor Dostoevsky adaptationWhite Nights (1957) and in 1958 he was fine as a little thief inMario Monicelli's comedyBig Deal on Madonna Street (1958). But his real breakthrough came in 1960, whenFederico Fellini cast him as an attractive, weary-eyed journalist of the Rome jet-set inLa Dolce Vita (1960); that film was the genesis of his "Latin lover" persona, which Mastroianni himself often denied by accepting parts of passive and sensitive men. He would again work with Fellini in several major films, like the exquisite8½ (1963) (as a movie director who finds himself at a point of crisis) and the touchingGinger & Fred (1986) (as an old entertainer who appears in a TV show). He also appeared as a tired novelist with marital problems inMichelangelo Antonioni'sLa Notte (1961), as an impotent young man in Mauro Bolognini'sBell' Antonio (1960) , as an exiled prince in John Boorman'sLeo the Last (1970), as a traitor in Paolo and Vittorio Taviani'sAllonsanfan (1974) and as a sensitive homosexual in love with a housewife inEttore Scola'sA Special Day (1977). He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor three times, forDivorce Italian Style (1961),A Special Day (1977), and Oci ciornie (1987). During the last decade of his life he worked with directors, likeTheodoros Angelopoulos,Bertrand Blier andRaúl Ruiz, who gave him three excellent parts inThree Lives and Only One Death (1996). He died of pancreatic cancer in 1996.

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