31 Facts About Bernardo Bertolucci

Bernardo Bertolucci was an Italian film director and screenwriter with a career that spanned 50 years.

Bernardo Bertolucci was the first Italian filmmaker to win the Academy Award for Best Director for The Last Emperor, one of many accolades including two Golden Globes, two David di Donatellos, a British Academy Award, and a Cesar Award.

Bernardo Bertolucci had previously received a Lifetime Achievement Golden Lion from the Venice Film Festival.

Bernardo Bertolucci's 1987 film The Last Emperor, a biopic of Chinese monarch Puyi, was a critical and commercial success, earning rave reviews and sweeping the 60th Academy Awards.

Bernardo Bertolucci continued directing well into the 21st century, releasing his final film, Me and You, in 2012.

Bernardo Bertolucci was born in the Italian city of Parma, in the region of Emilia-Romagna.

Bernardo Bertolucci was the elder son of Ninetta, a teacher, and Attilio Bertolucci, who was a poet, a reputed art historian, anthologist and film critic.

Bernardo Bertolucci's mother was born in Australia, to an Italian father and an Australian mother.

Bernardo Bertolucci had one brother, the theatre director and playwright Giuseppe.

Bernardo Bertolucci's cousin was the film producer Giovanni Bertolucci, with whom he worked on a number of films.

Bernardo Bertolucci initially wished to become a poet like his father.

Bernardo Bertolucci uses flashbacks to piece together the crime and the person who committed it.

The boom of Italian cinema, which gave Bernardo Bertolucci his start, slowed in the 1970s as directors were forced to co-produce their films with several of the American, Swedish, French, and German companies and actors due to the effects of the global economic recession on the Italian film industry.

Bernardo Bertolucci caused controversy in 1972 with the film Last Tango in Paris, starring Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider, Jean-Pierre Leaud and Massimo Girotti.

In 2013 Bernardo Bertolucci said that he had withheld the information from Schneider to generate a real "reaction of frustration and rage".

In 2016 Bernardo Bertolucci released a statement where he clarified that Schneider had known of the violence to be depicted in the scene, but had not been told about the use of butter.

In 1978 the Appeals Court of Bologna ordered three copies of the film to be preserved in the national film library with the stipulation that they could not be viewed, until Bernardo Bertolucci was later able to re-submit it for general distribution with no cuts.

Bernardo Bertolucci then wrote two screenplays based on Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest.

Bernardo Bertolucci hoped this would be his first film set in America, but nothing came of it.

In 1987, Bernardo Bertolucci directed the epic The Last Emperor, a biographical film telling the life story of Aisin-Gioro Puyi, the last emperor of China.

The film was independently produced by British producer Jeremy Thomas, with whom Bernardo Bertolucci worked almost exclusively from then on.

Bernardo Bertolucci, who co-wrote the film with Mark Peploe, won the Academy Award for Best Director.

Bernardo Bertolucci had proposed the film to the Chinese government as one of two possible projects.

In 2007, Bernardo Bertolucci received the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival for his life's work, and in 2011 he received the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

Bernardo Bertolucci originally intended to shoot the film in 3D but was forced to abandon this plan due to cost.

Bernardo Bertolucci appeared on the Radio Four programme Start the Week on 22 April 2013, and on Front Row on 29 April 2013, where he chose La Dolce Vita, a film directed by Federico Fellini, for the "Cultural Exchange".

Bernardo Bertolucci wrote many screenplays, both for his own films and for films directed by others, two of which he produced.

Bernardo Bertolucci was an actor in the film Golem: The Spirit of Exile, directed by Amos Gitai in 1992.

Bernardo Bertolucci was a professed Marxist and, like Luchino Visconti, who similarly employed many foreign artists during the late 1960s, Bertolucci used his films to express his political views.

On 27 September 2009, Bernardo Bertolucci was one of the signatories of the appeal to the Swiss government to release Roman Polanski, who was being held awaiting extradition to the United States.

Bernardo Bertolucci died of lung cancer in Rome on 26 November 2018, at the age of 77.