Marcello Mastroianni Complete Bio & Career
Mastroianni was a stage actor for ten years. In 1945, he began working as a helper for a film company while taking acting lessons, but until 1947, he did not make his debut on the big screen. It was with Miserabili, an adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel, directed by Riccardo Freda. In 1957, he made Dog Life for Mario Monicelli, and also highlighted with White Nights - based on the novel by Dostoevsky - by Luchino Visconti, with whom he would later make El extranjero in 1967.
In a short time, Mastroianni became a star thanks to his performances in Ruffufú, by Monicelli, in 1959, and, immediately, to his magnificent performance in La Notte by Michelangelo Antonioni (1961). But above all, Federico Fellini chose him to star in La dolce vita (1960) with Anita Ekberg, which, despite his small presence in the film, was a considerable advertising contribution. The collaboration with Fellini, in the long run so fruitful, continued at (1963), in which Mastroianni played a frustrated and womanizing film director, Guido Anselmi, marked with distinct autobiographical features of Fellini himself. And he followed late with Ginger and Fred (1986) and Interview (1987).In 1948 he married the Italian actress Floriana Clarabella, of whom he had a daughter, Barbara, and who accompanied him until the end of his days. But he also had relations with Catherine Deneuve, his mistress and mother of Chiara Mastroianni, the second of his daughters. Another, among the suggested relationships, was with Faye Dunaway.
It stands out that he formed a recognized cinematographic pair with Sophia Loren in A particular day of Ettore Scola; both handed over in 1992 an honorary Oscar to Federico Fellini. Mastroianni starred with his daughter, Chiara Mastroianni, in Raul Ruiz's Three Lives and a Single Death in 1996. For this performance, he won the Silver Wave Award at the Lauderdale International Film Festival.
Three times he was fortunate to win the Academy Award under the category of the best actor: Special Day and Dark Eyes and for Italian Divorce. Jack Lemmon, Dean Stockwell, and Mastroianni were the only actors awarded twice as best actor at the Cannes Film Festival. Mastroianni was awarded this award it for The Pizza Triangle in 1970 and Dark Eyes in 1987. He died in Paris due to cancer on December 19, 1996, at the age of 72.