 ROBERTO BENIGNI an actor and a producer Roberto
Benigni was born on 27 October 1952 in Misericordia, a small town near
Arezzo in Tuscany, when he was a boy he went to Vergaio a small town
near Prato. In 1972, at the age of 20, together with three friends:
Silvano Ambrogi, Carlo Monni and Aldo Buti, carrying only his guitar, he
moved to Rome. With his friends he started his artistic carreer in the
comedy "I burosauri" by Silvano Ambrogi at the Teatro dei
Satiri and since then he has been a
regular guest at Beat 72. He
created the character of Mario Cioni with Giuseppe Bertolucci in the
monologue: Cioni Mario, Gaspare and Giulia's son, and
later he also started the Tv series Onda Libera and the movie
"Berlinguer ti voglio bene", so severely criticized and so
boycotted that it was banned. In
1978 he took part in Renzo Arbore’s
show "L'altra domenica" as an unusual movie reviewer;
then in 1979, he took part as leading actor playing the role of a
teacher, "Chiedo Asilo" by Marco Ferreri. In 1980 he was one
the guest of the "Festival of San Remo" and then he acted in
"il Papocchio" by Arbore; in 1981 he played in "II
Minestrone" by Sergio Citti. Until then he had never directed any
movies but some shows which took place at the festival dell' Unità (the
meeting of Comunist Party). In 1983 ,for the first time in his life; he
directed and played in "Tu mi turbi", a sort of prologue to
the successful "Non ci resta che piangere", directed by
Benigni and Massimo Troisi; from now on his greatest movies as director
and as an actor as well. In
1985 "Tutto Benigni" had a great success, it is a live movie
shot during his successful theatrical tour. In 1986 he went to the USA
in order to be directed by Jim Jarmusch in crepuscular "Daunbailò"
with Toni Walts and John Lurie and then in an episode in "Taxisti
di notte" played by some famous actors. In 1988 he took part in
some Tv shows and then he directed the great "Il piccolo Diavolo"
played together with Walter Matthau. From now
Benigni started his cooperation
with Vincenzo Cerami. In 1989 he played as leading actor in the
last movie by Federico Fellini "La voce della Luna" with Paolo
Villaggio and with the "Turisti per caso". In
1990 he played as the leading voice in the musical fairy tale by Sergey
Prokofiev "Pierino e il lupo" accompanied by the European
Chamber Orchestra directed by Claudio Abbado in the last show in the
review Ferrara Musica 1990. In
1991 "Johnny Stecchino" comes out and it has a record
attendance for Italian cinema by getting over 40 billion Lire. In 1993
he takes a rest by playing the detective inspector Clouseau's secret son
in "The Son of Pink Panther" by Blake Edwards. He then
directed, played and produced "Il Mostro" and here Benigni
plays the role of Loris a meek and unusual lad suspected to be a maniac
but at the end it will be found out that the real maniac is Loris'
Japanese teacher. "Johnny Stecchino" had got much more money
than "II piccolo diavolo" but "ll Mostro" earned
much more than "Johnny Stecchino". 10 years after his last
theatrical tour, Benigni started a new tour on 2 August 1995, which was
very successful and which was shot and then copied in a homevideo by
Giuseppe Bertolucci.
In
1997 Benigni shoots a tragicomic film which is very different from his
previous ones, a great and a moving movie about the Second World War. The
title is "La vita è bella". It tells
the war lived by a Jews family who did not know to be Jew till
the day they were taken to
Auschwitz.
Have
you seen "La Vita è bella"? Have
you ever heard about the Italian actor Roberto Benigni?
Federica Panteghini & Silvia Bianco
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