ROME — Italian actress Monica Vitti, best
known for her starring roles in films by Michelangelo Antonioni, has died aged
90, the culture ministry said Wednesday.
اضافة اعلان
“Goodbye Monica Vitti, goodbye queen of Italian
cinema. Today is a truly sad day, we have lost a great artist and a great
Italian,”
Culture Minister Dario Franceschini said in a statement.
Vitti shot to international fame with the 1960 drama
“L’Avventura” (“The Adventure”) in which she plays a tormented woman who dallies
with the lover of her missing friend.
Born in Rome on November 3, 1931, Vitti — real name
Maria Luisa Ceciarelli — discovered her passion for the theatre during World
War Two, when she entertained her family with puppets to relieve boredom.
“As the bombs fell, when we had to take refuge in
the shelters, my little brother and I would improvise little plays to entertain
those around us,” she later recounted.
After graduating from
Rome’s National Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1953, she began her career in the theatre, revealing a natural
comic talent.
Vitti — who stood out from Italian contemporaries
such as Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida for her freckles and mane of blond
hair — was eventually spotted by Antonioni, with whom she quickly developed an
artistic and sentimental relationship.
“I was lucky enough to start my career with a man of
great talent”, but who was also “spiritual, full of life and enthusiasm”, Vitti
said in an interview on Italian television in 1982.
‘Wit, talent’
Working in dozens of films
throughout the 60s and 70s, Vitti’s output slowed the following decade,
although she collaborated again with Antonioni in 1980 for “The Mystery of
Oberwald”.
Former Italian culture minister Walter Veltroni
broke the news of Vitti’s death with a tweet. He said he had been asked to do
so by Roberto Russo, Vitti’s husband, and expressed his “pain, affection and
regret”.
The actress, who had been suffering from a
degenerative disease, had withdrawn from public life in recent years.
Vitti’s death drew accolades across the spectrum of
Italian society, with Prime Minister Mario Draghi saying Vitti “made Italian
cinema shine around the world”.
“An actress of great wit and extraordinary talent, she
conquered generations of Italians with her spirit, her bravura, her beauty,”
Draghi said in a statement.
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