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Massimo Troisi | |
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 Troisi in 1989 | |
| Born | (1953-02-19)19 February 1953 San Giorgio a Cremano, Italy |
| Died | 4 June 1994(1994-06-04) (aged 41) Rome, Italy |
| Occupations |
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| Years active | 1968–1994 |
| Height | 1.78 m (5 ft 10 in) |
Massimo Troisi (Italian pronunciation:[ˈmassimotroˈiːzi]; 19 February 1953 – 4 June 1994) was an Italian actor,cabaret performer, comedian, screenwriter and film director. He is best known for his works in the filmsI'm Starting back from Three (1981) andIl Postino: The Postman (1994), for which he was posthumously nominated for twoOscars. Nicknamed "the comedian of feelings",[1] he is considered one of the most important actors of Italian theater and cinema.[2]
Troisi was born into a large family inSan Giorgio a Cremano, a town nearNaples. His father Alfredo was atrain engineer. Some of his family experiences were later told in his first films.[3] After secondary school, Troisi wrote some poems inspired by his favourite author,Pier Paolo Pasolini, winning a youth poetry prize in his name, while also imitating him in sketches.[4] In 1969 he started to play in a small local theatre together with some childhood friends (includingLello Arena andEnzo Decaro).[3][4]
Trois's increasingly serious heart problems began in his teenage years, after he suffered from a bout ofrheumatic fever.[3][4] In 1976 he had to visit the United States for a heart valve operation, the expenses for which were paid with the help of his friends.
Troisi started his artistic career as acabaret showman in 1972, as a member of the comic trio called "I Saraceni" ("The Saracens") and, later, "La Smorfia" (from the name of the "book of the numbers" traditionally used in Naples forlottery andtombola, but also meaning "the face", as in "to make a face"). His mates were De Caro and Arena. They gained national fame on the radio and increased it consistently from 1977 onwards eventually becoming TV stars with the showsNon Stop,La sberla (1978) andLuna Park (1979). Troisi soon gained the status of leader of the trio. He was noted for his use of facial mimicry and of apparently confused speech—in these he drew inspiration from such famous figures of Neapolitan comedy asTotò, andEduardo andPeppino De Filippo.
Troisi wrote, directed, and starred in his first film,Ricomincio da tre ("I Start Over from Three") in 1981. He achieved wide success and critical praise, establishing himself as one of the most talented new Italian directors of the 1980s. Like his second film,Ricomincio da tre is centered on the troublesome love life of a Neapolitan character, partly inspired by Troisi's youth, as well as featuring Lello Arena.Scusate il ritardo, similar to the preceding one, was released in 1983, and hadGiuliana De Sio as co-star.
Troisi starred oppositeRoberto Benigni inNon ci resta che piangere (1984), in which they play two friends who are accidentally transported back in time to the 15th century; there they meetLeonardo da Vinci and, upon realising which age they are in, travel to Spain to try to stopChristopher Columbus from discovering the Americas.
After some small acting roles, in 1987 Troisi directedLe vie del Signore sono finite, set during the Fascist era. The film won a Silver Ribbon for best screenplay. In the following years, he starred alongsideMarcello Mastroianni, inEttore Scola'sSplendor (1989),Che ora è? (1989, who earned him and Mastroianni theVolpi Cup for Best Actor) andIl viaggio di Capitan Fracassa (1990). His last film as director (also as screenwriter and actor) wasPensavo fosse amore, invece era un calesse (1991), again centering on the everyday difficulties of love between a man and a woman (portrayed byFrancesca Neri).
Troisi came to international fame through the success ofIl Postino: The Postman, directed byMichael Radford. While working with an increasingly weakened heart from his teenage bout with rheumatic fever, Troisi died in 1994 of a heart attack in his sister's house atInfernetto,Rome, 12 hours after the camera stopped working and main filming onIl Postino had finished. It was reported that he postponed surgery to complete the film.[5]Troisi was just 41.
Years before he had scheduled a heart transplant but did not proceed with it, telling Radford: "You know, I don’t really want this new heart. You know why. Because the heart is the centre of emotion, and an actor is a man of emotion. Who knows what kind of an actor I’m going to be with someone else’s heart inside of me."[3]
Troisi wasposthumously nominated for Academy Awards forBest Actor andBest Writing forIl Postino, and was the sixth person to be posthumously nominated for an acting Academy Award. Earlier posthumous nominations wereJeanne Eagels,James Dean (twice),Spencer Tracy,Peter Finch (won) andRalph Richardson. In 1996 he was also nominated for aBAFTA in theBest Actor in a Leading Role category. The film wonBest Direction andBest Original Music categories
Pino Daniele worked on the soundtracks of most of his films.Eduardo De Filippo, the most prominent Italian dramatist of the 20th century withLuigi Pirandello, said he was "a comedian of the future, rooted in the past".
In 2023, a documentary film on Troisi, titled asMassimo Troisi: Somebody Down There Likes Me was made directed byMario Martone. The film had its premiere at73rd Berlin International Film Festival on 17 February 2023.[6][7]
