|
Roberto Benigni |
Benigni receiving a prize, February 2006 |
| Born |
Roberto Remigio
Benigni
27 October 1952
(age 60)
Manciano,
Castiglion Fiorentino, Italy |
| Occupation |
Film director, scriptwriter, actor
and comedian |
| Years active |
1970–2012 |
| Spouse(s) |
Nicoletta Braschi (1991–present) |
Roberto Remigio Benigni,
Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI[1]
(Italian pronunciation: [roˈbɛrto
beˈniɲɲi];[2]
born 27 October 1952) is an Italian actor, comedian, screenwriter and
director of film, theatre and television.
Early years
Benigni was born in
Manciano La Misericordia (a
frazione of
Castiglion Fiorentino), Italy, the son of Isolina Papini, a fabric
Creator, and Remigio Benigni, a bricklayer, carpenter, and farmer.[3]
He was raised
Catholic and served as an
altar boy.[4][5]
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 famous in Italy in the 1970s for a shocking TV series
called Onda Libera, on RAI2, by
Renzo Arbore, in which he interpreted the
satirical piece "anthem of the nimble body" (L'inno del corpo
sciolto, a hymn to
defecation).[citation
needed] A great scandal for the time, the series
was suspended due to
censorship. His first film was 1977's Berlinguer ti voglio bene,
also by Bertolucci.
Afterwards, 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 national leader
Enrico Berlinguer, a very serious figure. It was an unprecedented
act, given that until that moment Italian politicians were proverbially
serious and formal. It represented a breaking point, after which
politicians experimented with newer habits and "public manners",
attended fewer formal events and, generally speaking, modified their
lifestyle in order to exhibit a more popular behaviour. Benigni was
censored again in the 1980s for calling the
Pope John Paul II something impolite during an important live TV
show ("Wojtylaccio", meaning "Bad Wojtyla" in Italian).
His popularity increased with L'altra domenica (1976/9),
another TV show by Arbore in which Benigni portrays a lazy film critic
who never watches the films he's asked to review. Then
Bernardo Bertolucci cast him in a small speechless role as a window
upholsterer in the film
La Luna which evaded American distribution due to its subject
matter.
1980s
In 1980 he met
Cesenate
actress
Nicoletta Braschi, who was to become his wife and who has starred in
most of the films he directed.
Benigni's first film as director was Tu mi turbi (You upset
me,
1983). This film was also his first collaboration with
Nicoletta Braschi.
In 1984, he played in
Non ci resta che piangere ("Nothing left to do but cry") with
the very popular 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
Columbus in order to stop him from discovering the Americas
(although for very personal love reasons), but are not able to reach
him.
Benigni in the United States and his collaboration with Cerami
Beginning in 1986, Benigni starred in three films by North American
director
Jim Jarmusch. In
Down By Law (1986)
(which in Italy had its title spelled "Daunbailò", in Italian phonetics)
he played Bob, the innocent abroad, convicted for manslaughter, whose
irrepressible good humour and optimism help him escape and find love
(also starring Braschi as his beloved.) In
Night on Earth, (1991)
he plays a cabbie in Rome, causing his passenger, a priest, great
discomfort and a heart attack by confessing his bizarre sexual
experiences. Later, he also starred in the first of Jarmusch's series of
short films,
Coffee and Cigarettes (2003).
In 1990, he was a member of the Jury at the
40th Berlin International Film Festival.[6]
In 1993, he starred in
Son of the Pink Panther, directed by veteran
Blake Edwards. There, he played
Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau's illegitimate son who is assigned
to save the Princess of Lugash. The film bombed in the US, but was a hit
in Italy, his home country.
A serious role was in
Federico Fellini's last film,
La voce della luna (1989). In earlier years Benigni had started
a long-lasting collaboration with screenwriter
Vincenzo Cerami, for a series of films which scored great success in
Italy:
Il piccolo diavolo ("The little devil", with
Walter Matthau),
Johnny Stecchino ("Johnny Toothpick"), and
Il mostro ("The Monster").
Life
Is Beautiful and beyond
Benigni is probably best known outside Italy for his
1997
tragicomedy
Life Is Beautiful (La vita è bella), filmed in
Arezzo,
also written by Cerami. The film is about an Italian Jewish man who
tries to protect his son's innocence during his internment at a
Nazi
concentration camp, by telling him that
the Holocaust is an elaborate game and he must adhere very carefully
to the rules to win. Benigni's father had spent three years in a
concentration camp in
Bergen-Belsen,[7]
and La vita è bella is based in part on his father's experiences.
Although the story and presentation of the film had been discussed
during production with different Jewish groups to limit the offense it
might cause, the film was attacked by critics who accused it of
presenting the Holocaust without much suffering, and some who considered
that "laughing at everything" was not remotely appropriate, let alone
credible. More favourable critics praised Benigni's artistic daring and
skill to create a sensitive comedy involving the tragedy, a challenge
that
Charles Chaplin confessed he would not have done with
The Great Dictator had he been aware of the horrors of the
Holocaust.
In 1998, the film was nominated for seven
Academy Awards. At the
1999 ceremony Benigni received the award for
Best Actor (the first for a male performer in a non-English-speaking
role, and only the third overall acting Oscar for non-English-speaking
roles), the score by
Nicola Piovani won
Best Original Dramatic Score, and the film was awarded the Oscar for
Best Foreign Language Film, which Benigni accepted as the film's
director.
Famously, in the midst of being so giddy with delight after Life
Is Beautiful was announced as the Best Foreign Film, Benigni climbed
over and then stood on the backs of the seats in front of him and
applauded the audience before proceeding to the stage. And after winning
his Best Actor Oscar later in the evening, he said in his acceptance
speech, "There must be some terrible mistake, I used up all my English!"
As well, to close his speech, Benigni quoted the closing lines of
Dante's Divine Comedy, referencing "the love that moves the sun
and all the stars." At the
following year's ceremony, when he read the nominees for
Best Actress (won by
Hilary Swank for
Boys Don't Cry), host
Billy Crystal playfully appeared behind him with a large net to
restrain Benigni if he got excessive with his antics again. In addition,
on a 1999 episode of
Saturday Night Live, host
Ray
Romano played him in a sketch parodying his giddy behavior at the
ceremony.
Benigni played one of the main characters in
Asterix and Obelix vs Caesar as Detritus, a corrupted Roman tax
collector who wants to kill Julius Caesar, thereby seizing control of
the
Roman Republic.
As a director, his
2002 film
Pinocchio, one of the costliest films in Italian cinema,
performed well in Italy, but it bombed in North America, with a 0%
critics' score at
Rotten Tomatoes. He was also named as the
Worst Actor for his role as
Pinocchio, in the 23rd
Golden Raspberry Awards.
That same year, he gave a typically energetic and revealing interview
to Canadian filmmaker
Damian Pettigrew for
Fellini: I'm a Born Liar (2002), a cinematic portrait of the
maestro that was nominated for Best Documentary at the
European Film Awards, Europe's equivalent of the
Oscars. The film went on to win the prestigious Rockie Award for
Best Arts Documentary at the
Banff World Television Festival (2002) and the Coup de Coeur
at the International Sunnyside of the Doc Marseille (2002).
In 2003, Benigni was honored by the
National Italian American Foundation (NIAF), receiving the
Foundation's NIAF Special Achievement Award in Entertainment.
Benigni's latest film is La tigre e la neve (The
Tiger and the Snow, 2005), a love story set during the initial
stage of the
Iraq
War.
On 15 October 2005, he performed an impromptu
strip tease on Italy's most watched evening news program, removing
his shirt and draping it over the newscaster's shoulders. Prior to
removing his shirt, Benigni had already hijacked the opening credits of
the news program, jumping behind the newscaster and announcing:
"Berlusconi has resigned!" (Benigni is an outspoken critic of media
tycoon and then former Prime Minister
Silvio Berlusconi.) The previous day, he had led a crowd of
thousands in Rome on Friday in protest at the center-right government's
decision to cut state arts funding by 35 percent.
On 2 February 2007, he was awarded the degree of
Doctor Honoris Causa by the
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. On 22 April 2008, the
degree of
Doctor Honoris Causa was conferred on him by the
University of Malta, celebrated by a Settimana Dantesca
including Benigni's first stage appearance at a university and the
premiere of his performing with Dante scholar Robert Hollander.
Benigni has reportedly received offers to bring his Dante show to
Broadway, all of which he has turned down.
His last film is
To Rome with Love (film) with
Woody Allen in 2012.
TuttoDante
Benigni is an improvisatory poet (poesia estemporanea is a
form of art popularly followed and practiced in
Tuscany),
appreciated for his explanation and recitations of
Dante's
Divina Commedia by memory. He has reached over 45% Italian
households with his lectures on the Divine Comedy.
During 2006 and 2007, Benigni had a lot of success touring Italy with
his 90-minute "one man show" show TuttoDante ("Everything About
Dante"). Combining current events and memories of his past narrated
with an ironic tone, Benigni then begins a journey of poetry and passion
through the world of the
Divine Comedy.
TuttoDante has been performed in numerous Italian piazzas,
arenas, and stadiums for a total of 130
shows, with an estimated audience of about one million spectators.
Over 10 million more spectators watched the
TV show, Il V° canto dell’Inferno ("The 5th Song of Hell"),
broadcast by
Rai Uno on 29 November 2007, with re-runs on
Rai International.
Benigni began North American presentations of TuttoDante with
an announcement that he learned English to bring the gift of Dante's
work to English speakers. The English performance incorporates dialectic
discussion of language and verse and is a celebration of modernity and
the concept of human consciousness as created by language.
Benigni brought "TuttoDante" to the
United States,
Canada
and
Argentina in the TuttoDante Tour between 2008-2009 with performances
in San Francisco, Boston and Chicago. Benigni was feted in San Francisco
at a special reception held by the
National Italian American Foundation (NIAF) in his honor in May 24,
2009. Following his U.S. premiere Benigni performed his last
presentation in 16 June 2009, in
Buenos Aires, Argentina where he was awarded as Honorary Citizen
of the City of Buenos Aires in a ceremony held at the
Legislative Palace of the City in homage to the notable
Italian diaspora and culture in Argentina.[8]
Other media
Roberto Benigni is also a singer-songwriter. Among his recorded
performances are versions of
Paolo Conte's songs.
Honors
In 1999, a Golden Palm Star on the
Palm Springs, California,
Walk of Stars was dedicated to him.[9]
Honorary degrees
In addition to numerous film awards, Benigni has garnered honorary
degrees from universities worldwide:
- 1999 – Honorary Doctorate in Philosophy from the
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev,
Beersheba,
Israel.
- 2002 – Honorary Doctorate in Letters from the
University of Bologna,
Italy.
- 2003 – Honorary Degree in Psychology from the
Vita-Salute San Raffaele University,
Milan,
Italy.
- 2007 – Honorary Doctorate in Letters from the
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven,
Belgium.
- 2007 – Honorary Degree in Modern Philology from the
University of Florence,
Italy.
- 2008 – Honorary Doctorate in Letters from the
University of Malta.
- 2008 – Honorary Degree in Communication Arts from the
Touro University Rome,
Zagarolo,
Italy.
- 2012 – Honorary Degree in Modern Philology from the
University of Calabria,
Italy.
- 2012 – Honorary Doctorate in Letters from the
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki,
Greece.
Filmography (director)
Filmography
Books
- E l'alluce fu... monologhi e gags (1996)
References