Marcello Mastroianni.

Marcello Mastroianni was born in Fontana Liri, Italy in 1924, but soon his family moved to Turin and then Rome. During World War II, he was sent to a German prison camp, but he managed to escape and hide in Venice. After the war, he studied at the Sapienza University of Rome and joined a drama club, where he met director Luchino Visconti. He debuted in films as an extra in Marionette 1939.

Mastroianni’s breakthrough came in 1960 when Federico Fellini cast him as a weary journalist in La Dolce Vita, the film that created his Latin Lover persona, though he often subverted it by playing passive, sensitive men. He reunited with Fellini for 8½ 1963, playing a film director in crisis. He also starred in Michelangelo Antonioni’s La Notte 1961 as a novelist with marital problems, and in Ettore Scola’s A Special Day 1977 as a homosexual man in love with a housewife. He earned Academy Award nominations for Best Actor for Divorce Italian Style 1961, A Special Day 1977, and Dark Eyes 1987, a record for a performer in foreign-language films. In his later years, he worked with directors such as Theodoros Angelopoulos, Bertrand Blier, and Raúl Ruiz, who gave him one of his final roles in Three Lives and Only One Death 1996.

Mastroianni married Flora Carabella in 1950; they informally separated by 1964 but never divorced. He had a daughter, Barbara, with Carabella. In 1970, he began a relationship with French actress Catherine Deneuve, which lasted until 1974; their daughter Chiara was born in 1972. Deneuve was at his bedside when he died in 1996. From 1968 to 1970, he lived with Faye Dunaway, who later called him the love of her life. He also had relationships with Anouk Aimée, Lauren Hutton, and others. His long-term partner from 1976 until his death was director Anna Maria Tatò.

Mastroianni’s influence extends beyond his iconic performances. He holds the record for most Oscar nominations by a performer in foreign-language films, with three. Since 1998, the Venice Film Festival has presented the Marcello Mastroianni Award to a young actor or actress. When he died in 1996, the Trevi Fountain in Rome, featured in La Dolce Vita, was symbolically turned off and draped in black as a tribute. He is buried in the Cimitero Monumentale del Verano in Rome. Mastroianni is best remembered for his role in La Dolce Vita, which defined the Latin Lover archetype while he himself denied it.