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Anna Magnani is a Actor, Director and Scriptwriter Italienne born on 7 march 1908 at Rome (Italie)

Anna Magnani

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Nationality Italie
Birth 7 march 1908 at Rome (Italie)
Death 26 september 1973 (at 65 years) at Rome (Italie)
Awards Academy Award for Best Actress

Anna Magnani ([ˈanna maɲˈɲaːni]; 7 March 1908 – 26 September 1973) was an Italian stage and film actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress, along with four other international awards, for her portrayal of a Sicilian widow in The Rose Tattoo.

Born in Rome, she worked her way through Rome's Academy of Dramatic Art by singing at night clubs. During her career, her only child was stricken by polio when he was 18 months old and remained crippled.

She was referred to as "La Lupa," the "perennial toast of Rome" and a "living she-wolf symbol" of the cinema. Time magazine described her personality as "fiery", and drama critic Harold Clurman said her acting was "volcanic". In the realm of Italian cinema she was "passionate, fearless, and exciting," an actress that film historian Barry Monush calls "the volcanic earth mother of all Italian cinema." Director Roberto Rossellini called her "the greatest acting genius since Eleonora Duse". Playwright Tennessee Williams became an admirer of her acting and wrote The Rose Tattoo specifically for her to star in, a role for which she received an Oscar in 1955.

After meeting director Goffredo Alessandrini she received her first screen role in La cieca di Sorrento (The Blind Woman of Sorrento) (1934) and later achieved international fame in Rossellini's Rome, Open City (1945), considered the first significant movie to launch the Italian neorealism movement in cinema. As an actress she became recognized for her dynamic and forceful portrayals of "earthy lower-class women" in such films as L'Amore (1948), Bellissima (1951), The Rose Tattoo (1955), The Fugitive Kind (1959) and Mamma Roma (1962). As early as 1950 Life magazine had already stated that Magnani was "one of the most impressive actresses since Garbo".

Biography

She married her first film director, Goffredo Alessandrini, in 1935, two years after he discovered her on stage. After they married, she retired from full-time acting to "devote herself exclusively to her husband", although she continued to play smaller film parts. They separated in 1942.

Magnani had a love affair with the actor Massimo Serato, by whom she had her only child, a son named Luca. Magnani's life was struck by tragedy when Luca, who was born after her separation from Alessandrini, came down with crippling polio at only 18 months of age. He never regained use of his legs. As a result, she spent most of her early earnings for specialists and hospitals. After once seeing a legless veteran drag himself along the sidewalk, she said, "I realize now that it's worse when they grow up", and resolved to earn enough to "shield him forever from want".

In 1945 she fell in love with director Roberto Rossellini while working on Roma, Città Aperta (AKA Rome, Open City (1945). "I thought at last I had found the ideal man... [He] had lost a son of his own and I felt we understood each other. Above all, we had the same artistic conceptions." Rossellini had become violent, volatile and possessive, and they argued constantly about films or out of jealousy. "In fits of rage they threw crockery at each other." As artists, however, they complemented each other well while working on neorealist films. The two finally split apart when Rossellini fell in love with and married, Ingrid Bergman.

Magnani was superstitious and consulted astrologers, as well as believing in numerology. She also claimed to be clairvoyant. Magnani had a stranger quirk still in her love of defleaing street kittens with her thumbnails. She ate and drank very little and could subsist for long periods on nothing more than black coffee and cigarettes. However, these habits often affected her sleep: "My nights are appalling," she said. "I wake up in a state of nerves and it takes me hours to get back in touch with reality." During Benito Mussolini's rule, Magnani was known to make rude jokes about the Italian Fascist Party.