- Born
- Died
- Nicknames
- La Magnani
- Nannarella
- Height5′ 3″ (1.60 m)
- Anna Magnani was born in Rome, Italy (not in Egypt, as some biographies claim), on March 7, 1908. She was the child of Marina Magnani and an unknown father often said to be from Alexandria, Egypt, but whom Anna herself claimed was from the Calabria region of Italy although she never knew his name. Raised in poverty by her maternal grandmother in Rome after her mother left her, Anna worked her way through Rome's Academy of Dramatic Art by singing in cabarets and night-clubs, then began touring the countryside with small repertory companies.
Although she had a small role in a silent film in the late 1920s, she was not known as a film actress until Doctor, Beware (1941), directed by Vittorio De Sica. Her break-through film was Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City (1945) (A.K.A. Open City), generally regarded as the first commercially successful Italian neorealist film of the postwar years and the one that won her an international reputation. From then on, she didn't stop working in films and television, winning an Academy Award for her performance in the screen version of Tennessee Williams' The Rose Tattoo (1955), a part that was written for her by her close friend Williams. She worked with all of Italy's leading directors of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
She was renowned for her earthy, passionate, woman-of-the-soil roles. She and Rossellini were lovers for some years after Open City, until he began his infamous affair with Ingrid Bergman. She had one child, Luca, with Italian actor Massimo Serato. The boy was later stricken with polio and Magnani dedicated her life to caring for him. Her only marriage, to Italian director Goffredo Alessandrini in the mid-1930s, lasted only a short while and ended in an annulment. Her last film was Federico Fellini's Roma (1972). She died in her native Rome from pancreatic cancer the following year at age sixty-five.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Norman Powers/Robert Sieger
- SpouseGoffredo Alessandrini(1935 - 1950) (divorced, 1 child)
- Children
- ParentsPietro Del DuceMarina Magnani
- RelativesOlivia Magnani(Grandchild)
- Helen Mirren named Magnani as her acting idol and Burt Lancaster considered her the greatest actress with whom he ever worked.
- Tennessee Williams, after meeting her, said, "I never saw a more beautiful woman, enormous eyes, skin the color of Devonshire cream.".
- Magnani was inconsolable after learning she had terminal cancer. Her son Luca and director Roberto Rossellini, her one-time director and paramour, were at her bedside when she died at age 65 in 1973. She was laid to rest in the Rossellini family vault.
- Tennessee Williams wrote the role of Serafina in his play, The Rose Tattoo, for Anna, but her English skills were too limited to appear in the 1951 Broadway production. Instead, Maureen Stapleton played the role to great acclaim.
- Had an extremely tempestuous relationship with Roberto Rossellini beginning in 1944 and ended when he deserted her for Ingrid Bergman. She was known to have hurled crockery at him during their volatile times. In describing her, he reportedly stated that, "She was born carrying her liver in her teeth".
- Animals are good, better than humans really, animals do not betray you.
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