Vittorio Gassman | |
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Born |
Vittorio Gassmann 1 September 1922 Genoa, Liguria, Kingdom of Italy |
Died | 29 June 2000 Rome, Italy |
(aged 77)
Occupation | Actor, Director, Screenwriter |
Years active | 1942–1999 |
Spouse(s) |
Nora Ricci (1944–1952) Shelley Winters (1952–1954) Diletta D'Andrea (1972–2000) |
Children | Alessandro Gassman |
Awards |
Best Actor Award (Cannes Film Festival) 1975 Scent of a Woman |
Vittorio Gassman, Knight Grand Cross, OMRI (Italian pronunciation: [vitˈtɔːrjo ˈɡazman]; born Vittorio Gassmann; 1 September 1922 – 29 June 2000), popularly known as Il Mattatore, was an Italian theatre and film actor, as well as director.
He is considered one of the greatest Italian actors and is commonly recalled as an extremely professional, versatile, magnetic interpreter, whose long career includes both important productions as well as dozens of divertissements (which made him greatly popular).
He was born in Genoa to a German father, Heinrich Gassmann, and a Pisan Jewish mother, Luisa Ambron. While still very young he moved to Rome, where he studied at the Accademia Nazionale d'Arte Drammatica.
Gassman's debut was in Milan, in 1942, with Alda Borelli in Niccodemi's Nemica (theatre). He then moved to Rome and acted at the Teatro Eliseo joining Tino Carraro and Ernesto Calindri in a team that remained famous for some time; with them he acted in a range of plays from bourgeois comedy to sophisticated intellectual theatre. In 1946, he made his film debut in Preludio d'amore, while only one year later he appeared in five films. In 1948 he played in Riso amaro.
It was with Luchino Visconti's company that Gassman achieved his mature successes, together with Paolo Stoppa, Rina Morelli and Paola Borboni. He played Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams' Un tram che si chiama desiderio (A Streetcar Named Desire), as well as in As You Like It (by Shakespeare) and Oreste (by Vittorio Alfieri). He joined the Teatro Nazionale with Tommaso Salvini, Massimo Girotti, Arnoldo Foà to create a successful Peer Gynt (by Henrik Ibsen). With Luigi Squarzina in 1952 he co-founded and co-directed the Teatro d'Arte Italiano, producing the first complete version of Hamlet in Italy, followed by rare works such as Seneca's Thyestes and Aeschylus's The Persians.