Beba Lončar

Biography

Beba Lončar, born Desanka Lončar in Belgrade on 28 April 1943, is a Serbian actress who first became a star in Yugoslavia before building a successful career in Italian cinema. Across roughly fifty films between 1960 and 1982, she became a recognisable face of Italian popular comedy in the 1960s and 1970s.

She started out in children's and youth programmes on the newly launched Belgrade television in the late 1950s, and studied acting with director Soja Jovanović, who gave her her film debut. Her breakthrough came with Deveti krug (1960), Frane Štiglić's Holocaust drama about a Jewish family from Zagreb, and she quickly followed it with the teen comedy Ljubav i moda, which made her an overnight star. A five-year contract with Avala Film followed, and with Dvoje (1961) she began to be billed as Beba, a name she kept for the rest of her career.

From 1963 she took part in foreign co-productions shot in Yugoslavia, including Jack Cardiff's The Long Ships and the musical western Freddy in the Wild West. In 1964 Mauro Bolognini cast her in a segment of La donna è una cosa meravigliosa, and the role led to a move to Rome. The following year she appeared in six Italian films, among them Mario Monicelli's Casanova 70, in which she played one of Marcello Mastroianni's romantic interests.

In Italy she was typically cast as an exotic or enigmatic seductress in the commedia all'italiana, a niche she handled well though it narrowed the range of roles on offer. Her career wound down in the early 1980s, and she is remembered today as one of the first Yugoslav screen stars to find success abroad.

Key films

• Deveti krug (1960): her debut feature, in a supporting part well received by critics.
• Ljubav i moda (1960): the teen comedy that made her a star in Yugoslavia.
• The Long Ships (1964): the British-Yugoslav co-production in which she played Gerda.
• Casanova 70 (1965): in which she was one of Marcello Mastroianni's love interests.
• Brancaleone at the Crusades (1970): Mario Monicelli's comedy, with her as Berta d'Avignone.
• Lucky, the Inscrutable (1967): one of her typical roles in the Italian genre cinema of the period.