Roberto Benigni
Roberto Remigio Benigni Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI[1] (Italian: [roˈbɛrto beˈniɲɲi]; born 27 October 1952) is an Italian actor, comedian, screenwriter and director. He gained international recognition for writing, directing and starring in the Holocaust comedy-drama film Life Is Beautiful (1997), for which he received the Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best International Feature Film. Benigni was the first actor to win the Best Actor Academy Award for a non–English language performance.
Roberto Benigni
- Actor
- film director
- screenwriter
- comedian
1970–present
Benigni made his acting debut in 1977's Berlinguer, I Love You, which he also wrote, and which was directed by Giuseppe Bertolucci. Benigni's directorial debut was the 1983 anthology film Tu mi turbi, which was also the acting debut of his wife, Nicoletta Braschi. He continued directing and also starring in the comedic films Nothing Left to Do But Cry (1984), The Little Devil (1988), Johnny Stecchino (1991), The Monster (1994), Pinocchio (2002), and The Tiger and the Snow (2005).
Benigni acted in the Jim Jarmusch films Down by Law, Night on Earth (1991) and Coffee and Cigarettes (2003). He also acted in Blake Edwards' Son of the Pink Panther (1993), Woody Allen's To Rome with Love (2012), and Matteo Garrone's Pinocchio (2019).
Early life[edit]
Benigni was born on 27 October 1952 in Manciano La Misericordia (a frazione of Castiglion Fiorentino), the son of Isolina Papini (1919–2004), a fabric maker, and Luigi Benigni (1919–2004), a bricklayer, carpenter, and farmer.[2] He has three sisters: Bruna (born 1945), Albertina (born 1947) and Anna (born 1948). He was raised Catholic and served as an altar boy;[3][4] later in his life he became an atheist,[5] but then resumed his interest in religious topics, such as the Ten Commandments and the Song of Songs, and finally returned to practicing Catholicism.[6]
His first experiences as a theatre actor took place in 1971, in Prato. During that autumn he moved to Rome where he took part in some experimental theatre shows, some of which he also directed. In 1975, Benigni had his first theatrical success with Cioni Mario di Gaspare fu Giulia, written by Giuseppe Bertolucci.
Benigni became widely known in Italy in the 1970s for a television series called Onda Libera, on RAI2, produced by Renzo Arbore, in which he interpreted the satirical piece The Hymn of the Body Purged (L'inno del corpo sciolto, a scatological song about the joys of defecation).[7] A great scandal for the time, the series was suspended due to censorship.[8] His first film was 1977's Berlinguer, I Love You (Berlinguer ti voglio bene), also by Bertolucci.
His popularity increased with L'altra domenica (1976–1979), another TV show of Arbore's in which Benigni portrayed a lazy film critic who never watches the films he's asked to review. Bernardo Bertolucci then cast him in a small speechless role as a window upholsterer in the film La Luna which had limited American distribution due to its subject matter.
Career[edit]
Early roles[edit]
In 1980 he met Cesenate actress Nicoletta Braschi, who became his wife on 26 December 1991 and who has starred in most of the films he has directed.
In June 1983 he appeared during a public political demonstration by the Italian Communist Party, with which he was a sympathiser, and on this occasion, he lifted and cradled the party's national leader Enrico Berlinguer. It was an unprecedented act, given that until that moment Italian politicians were proverbially serious and formal. Benigni was censored again in the 1980s for calling Pope John Paul II something impolite during an important live TV show ("Wojtylaccio", meaning "Bad Wojtyla" in Italian, but with a somewhat friendly meaning in Tuscan dialect).
Benigni's first film as director was Tu mi turbi (You Upset Me) in 1983. This film was also his first collaboration with Braschi.
In 1984, he played in Non ci resta che piangere ("Nothing Left to Do but Cry") with comic actor Massimo Troisi. The story was a fable in which the protagonists are suddenly thrown back in time to the 15th century, just a little before 1492. They start looking for Christopher Columbus in order to stop him from discovering the Americas (for very personal reasons), but are not able to reach him.
In other media[edit]
Benigni is also a singer-songwriter. Among his recorded performances are versions of Paolo Conte's songs.