Giulia Anna "Giulietta" Masina was an Italian film actress best known for her performances as Gelsomina in La Strada and Cabiria in Nights of Cabiria, for which she won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival.
18 Facts About Giulietta Masina
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Giulia Anna Giulietta Masina, the eldest of four children, was born in San Giorgio di Piano, near Bologna.
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Giulietta Masina's father was a violinist and her mother was a schoolteacher.
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When Giulietta Masina was four, her uncle took her to meet the Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello, who was later to win the Nobel Prize in literature.
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Giulietta Masina's parents agreed, in part because they believed that in Rome Giulietta Masina would have more success in the arts for which she was already demonstrating a unique talent.
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Giulietta Masina attended an Ursuline convent school and took lessons in voice, piano, and dance.
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Giulietta Masina graduated with a degree in Literature from Sapienza University of Rome.
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Giulietta Masina found work as a voice actress in radio during the war, which earned her more money and attention than stage acting.
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Giulietta Masina made her film debut in an uncredited role in Roberto Rossellini's Paisa, which was co-written by Fellini.
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Giulietta Masina received her first screen credit in Alberto Lattuada's Without Pity, which was an adaptation co-written by Fellini, and played opposite John Kitzmiller.
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Giulietta Masina starred with Anthony Quinn in Fellini's La Strada, playing the abused stooge of Quinn's travelling circus strongman.
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Giulietta Masina won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival for her portrayal of the title role in Fellini's Nights of Cabiria.
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Giulietta Masina played a prostitute who endures life's tragedies and disappointments with both innocence and resilience of biblical proportions.
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Giulietta Masina's career was damaged by the critical and box office failure of The High Life directed by Julien Duvivier.
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Giulietta Masina performed in The Madwoman of Chaillot, her first film in English, which starred Katharine Hepburn.
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Giulietta Masina then rejected outside offers to attend to her husband's precarious health.
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Giulietta Masina's last film was Jean-Louis Bertucelli's A Day to Remember.
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Giulietta Masina died from lung cancer on 23 March 1994 at age 73, five months after her husband's death on 31 October 1993.