Marcello Mastroianni

Born: 28 September 1924
Where: Fontana Liri, Italy
Died: 19 December 1996

Called 'The Italian Gregory Peck' by critics, Mastroianni is one of the few Italian stars to achieve the international fame of female compatriots Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida. He is also one of the most important European film actors to emerge since the end of WWII.

Mastroianni had a long road to filmdom: he was raised in Turin and Rome, escaped from a German labour camp and lived on the run for the war's duration. Having worked as a film extra before the war, Mastroianni got an accounting job at a studio and acted in local theatre productions at night, where he was discovered by director Luchino Visconti. By the early 1950s, he was appearing in minor film roles.

Mastroianni was gradually given bigger roles in more than 20 Italian films before getting the chance to showcase his talent in Tempi Nostri and Cronaca dei Poveri Amanti in 1954.

He worked for the first time with director Vittorio De Sica and co-star Sophia Loren in the crime comedy Peccato che Sia una Canaglia (Too Bad She's Bad). Mastroianni and Loren went on to co-star in another eleven films, including De Sica's Ieri, Oggi, Domani (Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow) and Matrimonia all'italiana (Marriage - Italian Style), for which he received a Best Actor Oscar nomination.

He earned a second Oscar nomination with the social drama Una Giornata Particolare (A Special Day).

By the late 1950s, Mastroianni was a major Italian star, but was little-known in the US until he appeared in Federico Fellini's classic La Dolce Vita. Mastroianni went on to function as Fellini's chief protagonist and mouthpiece in films from 8 1/2 through to 1987's Intervista.

Mastroianni appeared in films such as Allonsonfan, Gabriela and Nikita Mikhalkov's Dark Eyes, which was adapted from short stories by Anton Chekhov, and earned the actor another Best Actor Oscar nomination.

An appearance in the US-made feature Used People was not a huge success. Mastroianni made his final film appearance in Manoel de Oliveira's Journey to the Beginning of the World in 1997.

The actor's longtime companion, Anna Maria Tato, shot the documentary Marcello Mastroianni: I Remember, Yes I Remember during filming of Journey to the Beginning of the World, which serves as both a tribute to and summary of the actor's life and career.