Marcello Mastroianni

Marcello Mastroianni — Biography

Marcello Vincenzo Domenico Mastroianni was born on 28 September 1924 in Fontana Liri and grew up in Turin and Rome; he was a nephew of sculptor Umberto Mastroianni and brother of film editor Ruggero Mastroianni. He took small stage roles as a young man, was held in a German camp during World War II, and escaped to hide in Venice until the war's end. Afterward he worked in theatre under Luchino Visconti before moving into film, achieving his real breakthrough in the late 1950s with pictures such as Big Deal on Madonna Street. His partnership with Federico Fellini turned him into a world star: he played a disillusioned tabloid columnist in La Dolce Vita (1960) and a director in creative crisis in 8½ (1963), while also forming a celebrated screen pairing with Sophia Loren across dozens of films. Nominated three times for the Academy Award, for Divorce Italian Style, A Special Day and Dark Eyes, he twice won Best Actor at Cannes and also received two BAFTAs, two Volpi Cups and the Italian Republic's highest order of merit. He married Flora Carabella in 1950 and had a daughter, Barbara, with her, and later had a daughter, Chiara, now also an actress, from his relationship with Catherine Deneuve after an earlier, long relationship with Faye Dunaway. Over a career of roughly 150 films, he died of pancreatic cancer in Paris.