Roberto Benigni

Roberto Benigni - Quick Facts

Profile Overview of Roberto Benigni

Roberto Remigio Benigni ( bə-NEE-nyee,; born 27 October 1952) is an Italian actor, comedian, screenwriter, and film director. He gained international recognition for writing, directing, and starring in the Holocaust comedy drama film Life Is Beautiful (1997), for which he received the Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best International Feature Film. Benigni is the first, and only, recipient of an Academy Award for Best Actor for a non-English language performance.

This profile of Roberto Benigni covers Early Life and Family Background, Early roles, Hollywood roles, Life Is Beautiful and Beyond Life Is Beautiful.

Benigni made his acting debut in 1977's Berlinguer, I Love You, which he also wrote, and which was directed by Giuseppe Bertolucci. Benigni's directorial debut was the 1983 anthology film Tu mi turbi, which was also the acting debut of his wife, Nicoletta Braschi. He continued directing and also starring in the comedic films Nothing Left to Do But Cry (1984), The Little Devil (1988), Johnny Stecchino (1991), The Monster (1994), the award-winning film Life Is Beautiful (1997), Pinocchio (2002, as the title character), and The Tiger and the Snow (2005).

Benigni acted in the Jim Jarmusch films Down by Law (1986), Night on Earth (1991), and Coffee and Cigarettes (2003). He also acted in Federico Fellini's The Voice of the Moon (1990), Blake Edwards' Son of the Pink Panther (1993), Woody Allen's To Rome with Love (2012), and Matteo Garrone's Pinocchio (2019, as Geppetto).

Early Life and Family Background of Roberto Benigni

Benigni was born on 27 October 1952 in Manciano La Misericordia (a frazione of Castiglion Fiorentino), Tuscany, the son of Isolina Papini (1919–2004), a fabric maker, and Luigi Benigni (1919–2004), a bricklayer, carpenter, and farmer. He has three sisters: Bruna (born 1945), Albertina (born 1947) and Anna (born 1948). He was raised Catholic and served as an altar boy; later in his life he became an atheist, but then resumed his interest in religious topics, such as the Ten Commandments and the Song of Songs.

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 studied clown under Philippe Gaulier at École Philippe Gaulier.

Benigni became widely known in Italy in the 1970s for a television series called Onda Libera, on Rai 2, produced by Renzo Arbore, in which he interpreted the satirical piece The Hymn of the Body Purged (L'inno del corpo sciolto, a scatological song about the joys of defecation). A great scandal for the time, the series was suspended due to censorship. His first film was 1977's Berlinguer, I Love You (Berlinguer ti voglio bene), also by Bertolucci.

His popularity increased with L'altra domenica (1976–1979), another TV show of Arbore's in which Benigni portrayed a lazy film critic who never watches the films he's asked to review. Bernardo Bertolucci then cast him in a small speechless role as a window upholsterer in the film La Luna which had limited American distribution due to its subject matter.

Early roles of Roberto Benigni

In 1980 he met Cesenate actress Nicoletta Braschi, who became his wife on 26 December 1991 and who has starred in most of the films he has directed.

In June 1983 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 party's national leader Enrico Berlinguer. It was an unprecedented act, given that until that moment Italian politicians were proverbially serious and formal. Benigni was censored again in the 1980s for calling Pope John Paul II something impolite during an important live TV show (Wojtylaccio, meaning 'Bad Wojtyla' in Italian, but with a somewhat friendly meaning in Tuscan dialect).

Benigni's first film as director was Tu mi turbi (You Upset Me) in 1983. This film was also his first collaboration with Braschi.

In 1984, he played in Non ci resta che piangere ('Nothing Left to Do but Cry') with 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 Christopher Columbus to stop him from discovering the Americas (for personal reasons), but are not able to reach him.

Hollywood roles

Beginning in 1986, Benigni starred in three films by American director Jim Jarmusch. In Down By Law (1986) (which in Italy had its title spelt "Daunbailò", in Italian phonetics) he played Bob, an innocent foreigner living in the United States, convicted of manslaughter, whose irrepressible good humour and optimism help him to escape and find love (the film also starred Braschi as his beloved). In Night on Earth (1991) he played a cabbie in Rome, who causes 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.

In 1993, he starred in Son of the Pink Panther, directed by veteran Blake Edwards. Benigni 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 his homeland.

Benigni had a rare serious role in Federico Fellini's last film, La voce della luna ('The Voice of the Moon') (1990). 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

Benigni is widely known outside Italy for his 1997 tragicomedy Life Is Beautiful (La vita è bella), filmed in Arezzo, and co-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 carefully to the rules to win. Benigni's father had spent three years in a concentration camp in Bergen-Belsen, and La vita è bella is based in part on his father's experiences. Benigni was also inspired by the story of Holocaust survivor Rubino Romeo Salmonì. Although the story and presentation of the film had been discussed during production with different Jewish groups to limit the offence it might cause, the film was attacked by some critics, who accused it of presenting the Holocaust without much suffering, while others argued that a comedy about such a subject was not appropriate. More favourable critics praised Benigni's artistic daring and skill to create a sensitive comedy involving the Holocaust, a challenge that Charlie Chaplin confessed he would not have taken on with The Great Dictator had he been aware of the true horrors occurring in ghettos and concentration camps in Europe at the time.

Source: adapted from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Benigni), text available under CC BY-SA 4.0.