Monica Vitti

Monica Vitti (born November 3, 1931 – died February 2, 2022) was an Italian actress most widely noted for her frosty expressiveness and starring roles during the early 1960s in films directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, her lover at that time. Born Maria Luisa Ceciarelli in Rome, as a teenager she acted in amateur productions, then trained as an actor at Rome's National Academy of Dramatic Arts (graduating in 1953) and at Pittman's College, where she played a teen in a charity performance of Dario Niccodemi's La nemica. She toured Germany with an Italian acting troupe and her first stage appearance in Rome was for a production of Niccolò Machiavelli's La Mandragola. Vitti received critical praise for starring roles in the Antonioni films La notte (Night, 1961), L'eclisse (Eclipse, 1962) and Il deserto rosso (Red Desert, 1964), which are often cited with L'avventura as a series. Vitti's only English language film was the title role in Modesty Blaise (1966), a mod James Bond spy spoof with Terence Stamp and Dirk Bogarde which had only mixed success and received harsh critical reviews. In 1970 Vitti starred with Marcello Mastroianni in Ettore Scola's highly successful romantic comedy Dramma della gelosia (The Pizza Triangle, 1970). In 1974 she won the David di Donatello award for Best Actress in Alberto Sordi's Polvere di stelle (1973). She starred in Luis Buñuel's innovative Le Fantôme de la liberté (1974) and with Barbara Bouchet in L'Anantra all'arancia (1975), a farcical sex comedy. Throughout the later 1970s and early 1980s Vitti appeared mostly in Italian films which did not have international distribution. In 1980 after 15 years she reunited with Antonioni for his Il mistero di Oberwald which was shot on video, after which she did much less screen work. In 1989 Vitti wrote, directed and starred in Scandalo Segreto, then retired from the cinema.