Anna Magnani

Anna Magnani was born in Rome, Italy (not in Egypt, as some biographies claim), on March 7, 1908. She was the illegitimate 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 nightclubs, 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 only marriage, to Italian director Goffredo Alessandrini in the mid-1930s, lasted only a short while and ended in an annulment.

Her 1933 marriage to director Goffredo Alessandrini ended in 1940 but it was not until 1950 that the marriage was annulled.

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".

Her breakthrough film was Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City (1945) (aka 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.

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, a son, Luca, out of wedlock by Italian actor Massimo Serato. The boy was later stricken with polio and Magnani dedicated her life to caring for him.

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.

Jean Renoir built his magical film The Golden Coach (1952) around her performance as the actress Camilla from the commedia dell'arte.

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.

Was the 44th actress to receive an Academy Award; she won the Best Actress Oscar for The Rose Tattoo (1955) at The 28th Annual Academy Awards (1956) on March 21, 1956.

As Vittorio De Sica was very eager to work with her, he originally cast her as Cesira in Two Women (1960), with 25-year-old Sophia Loren playing her shy 13-year-old daughter, Rosetta. However Magnani felt that the age gap between Loren and her character was too big to be overlooked and suggested that she play Cesira instead, otherwise the film would have been unconvincing. Loren then went on to play Cesira (with 12-year-old Eleonora Brown in the role of Rosetta) and won an Academy Award for her performance.

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.