Fellini belongs to nature.
For me, Fellini was like a watermelon. It is there. A watermelon cannot die.
I remember in the circus learning that the clown was the prince, the high prince. I always thought that the high prince was the lion or the magician, but the clown is the most important.
In Italy, the country where fascism was born, we have a particular relation with the Holocaust, but as a turning point in history it belongs to everybody in the world. It is a part of humanity.
It's a sign of mediocrity when you demonstrate gratitude with moderation.
My duty is to try to reach beauty. Cinema is emotion. When you laugh you cry.
My father was a farmer and my mother was a farmer, but, my childhood was very good. I am very grateful for my childhood, because it was full of gladness and good humanity.
My mother brought me magicians and witches, because I was very ugly, really revolting. So she thought somebody had put a spell on me - this is the truth - so she made me drink some horrible terrifying potions, for year.
The first movie I saw - and I don't know if it influenced me - was Ben Hur. We watched it outside in a corn field, and it ran backwards, so the first movie I ever saw was Ben Hur backwards.
When I first saw a Fellini movie, I came out of the movie theatre and decided to become a lawyer! I thought to myself, it's impossible to make something so beautiful!
[on winning the Best Actor Academy Award for Vita è bella, La (1997) after already accepting the Best Foreign Language Film award as its director] "Thank you. This is a terrible mistake, because I used up all my English!"
Charlie Chaplin used his ass better than any other actor. In all his films his ass is practically the protagonist. For a comic, the ass has incredible importance.
I'm so happy that every organ in my body is moving in a very bad way." - said backstage at the Oscars after he won the Best Actor category
After his movie Vita è bella, La (1997) received seven Academy Award nominations, he met the italian president Oscar L. Scalfaro and, after shaking his hand, said "Now I have the Oscar in my hand!"
On the day the "L'Ulivo" party won the elections, Benigni jumped on the stage and kissed Veltroni, one of the party components.
Father: Luigi Benigni, farmer, carpenter, bricklayer, b. 1918, prisoner in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp 1943-1945. Roberto used his father's stories as the basis for his film Vita è bella, La (1997).
Mother: Isolina Benigni (fabric inspector), born 1918.
Sister: Bruna Benigni (textile worker), born 1945.
Sister: Albertina Benigni (flower shop owner), born 1947.
Sister: Anna Benigni (teacher's aide), born 1948.
Education: Seminary in Florence, planning to become a priest.
Dropped out when flood damaged school.
Accounting school in Prato, Italia.
He and Laurence Olivier are the only two actors to have directed themselves in Oscar winning performances.
The first actor to win a Best Actor Oscar for a non-English speaking role.
Only the fifth actor in history to win the Oscar for Best Actor in a comedy after Clark Gable in It Happened One Night (1934), James Stewart in The Philadelphia Story (1940), Lee Marvin in Cat Ballou (1965) and Richard Dreyfuss in The Goodbye Girl (1977).
Benigni met wife Nicoletta Braschi on the set of Tu mi turbi (1983).
The first actor to win a Worst Actor Razzie for a non-English speaking role.
He joins Sylvester Stallone, Prince, Kevin Costner, William Shatner, and Tom Green as being the only actors to direct themselves in performances that would "win" them a Razzie Award for Worst Actor.
When he "won" the 2003 Razzie Award for Worst Actor in Pinocchio (2002), Razzies.com declared his win "By a Nose!", as he'd just barely beaten fellow nominee Steven Seagal in the film Half Past Dead (2002) by a mere few votes.
Federico Fellini considered him a genius
Member of the jury at the Berlin International Film Festival 1990
Has his look-alike puppet in the French show "Guignols de l'info, Les" (1988).
You can share a link to this page with your friend!