Anna Magnani

Biography

Anna Magnani (Rome, 1908 – Rome, 1973) was an Italian stage and screen actress and one of the most striking female figures of postwar European cinema. Her raw, intense style made her a symbol of Italian neorealism and, later, one of the few Italian actresses to win recognition in Hollywood.

Her early life is uncertain in some details. Although she is usually considered a Roman, some sources place her birth in Alexandria, Egypt. She was raised by her grandmother in a poor district of Rome, and to earn a living she sang in nightclubs and cabarets, which earned her the nickname «the Italian Édith Piaf». She trained at Rome's Academy of Dramatic Art and worked intensely in the theatre between 1929 and 1950.

Her first screen role came in The Blind Woman of Sorrento (1934), after she met the director Goffredo Alessandrini, whom she married that same year. It was Rossellini's Rome, Open City (1945) that brought her international attention. She later reunited with Rossellini for L'Amore (1948), which includes an adaptation of Jean Cocteau's The Human Voice. Their relationship ended when he cast Ingrid Bergman in Stromboli, and Magnani starred in Volcano (1950) in a rivalry the press followed closely.

In Bellissima (1951), directed by Luchino Visconti, she played a domineering mother who pushes her daughter toward a beauty contest. She then made The Golden Coach (1952) with Jean Renoir, who called her the greatest actress he had ever worked with.

In 1955 she went to Hollywood for The Rose Tattoo, directed by Daniel Mann from a play by Tennessee Williams, who had written the part with her in mind. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress, though she did not attend the ceremony because she was convinced she would not win. She went on to English-language work such as Wild Is the Wind (1957), directed by George Cukor, and The Fugitive Kind (1959), opposite Marlon Brando. Her performance in Mamma Roma (1962), directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini, is considered one of the most acclaimed of her career.

Her last film appearances were The Secret of Santa Vittoria (1969) and a brief homage in Fellini's Roma (1972), in which she appears surprised at her own front door. In 1966 she returned to the stage in Medea. Her private life was shaped by the polio that left her son Luca disabled, and she devoted decades to caring for him. She died in Rome in 1973 of pancreatic cancer. She remains a symbol of Italian cinema and of a direct, visceral style of acting, and she has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Key films

• Rome, Open City (1945): her death scene became one of the most remembered moments of neorealism.
• Bellissima (1951): an ambitious mother who pushes her daughter toward a beauty contest.
• The Rose Tattoo (1955): the widow Serafina, the role that won her the Academy Award for Best Actress.
• Wild Is the Wind (1957): one of her English-language films, directed by George Cukor opposite Anthony Quinn.
• Mamma Roma (1962): a prostitute who wants a respectable life for her son, under Pasolini's direction.