Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
First woman to win a Best Actress Oscar for a foreign-language film, later an honorary Oscar, and Italy's most-awarded film actress with six top prizes.
On the island
Eight records
It was a song that I heard for the first time in Pozzoli after the war, of course. Ella's voice represented America to me, and to me America was so far away still at that time, because I didn't even knew that there was America somewhere in the world, because it was incredible. And Lafayette Gerald really gave me a gave me a sense of life.
My mother was a a concert pianist and would play this piece whenever she could find a a piano to play on. When I think of my mother, I get this feeling inside that is uh bittersweet. Sweet because she was a wonderful woman, and loved her daughter so much, and bitter because she was often sad and unfulfilled.
This is the film that my husband Carlo was the most proud of. He fought for this music to be in the film. He had great instinct and was a great artist. I miss him every day of my life.
This piece reminds me of my arrival in Hollywood in my twenties.
She represents so many chapters of my life. She also connects me to my love of Italy. I've traveled all over the world, but Italy is my home.
The sixth piece of music is the market place at Limoge by Bursorski, which is conducted by my son Carlo.
The seventh piece of music is EOC, performed by Laura Pausini, and composed by the great Dian Warren from my latest film, The Life Ahead.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:25Where do you find that passion today?
It's uh something that uh I think that you have it within you. If uh you have something in life that uh it really uh you want to do because it's important for you, for your life, or for your children, or for your family, if you have it strongly inside of you, I think that no matter what happens, I would do it. When it's worth it, I like to dare.
Presenter asks
5:32Tell me more about your mother.
My mother my mother never knew. Who she was? She was uh a lost soul with a great, great way of uh uh wanting to do things, but uh really um not enough strength, not enough flame inside to be able to overcome all this negative thinking and to join what she really wanted in her life. But she was a good person, a good person, a tender person, she was a good mother and she was a good pianist. But she never, never really took care of it and become really uh some some professional pianist uh and have uh a kind of success that she could have had.
Presenter asks
10:51What do you remember about [World War Two]?
We were always in a battle with something. I didn't know what it was, but uh bombing and drama and uh falling houses and no food at all. And you know, it's incredible because now that I'm talking to you, I'm talking about many, many years ago. And I still I still think about these kind of things like it was yesterday. It it's very, very much alive, very much terrible. Yeah. So it was a fight for survival u until the war was over really.
The keepsakes
The book
Edoardo Ponti
Letters from her young father? BY MY SON EDOAARDO. It is a poetry book that he wrote for his daughter before she was born. It's beautiful when you see your son turn into a father.
The luxury
I would bring on the island um a pizza oven. I cannot live with other pizza. I I'm a Neapolitan, invented pizza, so if there was a pizza oven on the island, I would turn it uh into a little corner of Naples and it would make me feel at home and I would eat very well.
Presenter asks
18:52How much did [The Gold of Naples] change things for you?
Everything. Everything because the role was perfect for me. It was a role of a girl of sixteen years old, Neapolitan, no money, no food, the street was uh her home, and this was the character of the film. And the director was Vittorio De Sica. M. But I didn't know what it was acting. I didn't know what it was. Nothing, nothing, nothing. So for me, De Sika I I really have him in my heart because uh with this simplicity I really owe to him a lot of what I I got from um lines, from uh what I had to do. Um it was really it was really incredible because he did this like a teacher, but with a lot of uh simplicity. Wonderful person.
Presenter asks
26:08What did you mean by ["Before Two Women I was a performer, afterwards I was an actress"]?
Because you grow. Because you grow and by being directed always three or four times by the same director that you know by heart, then you realize how much you you learned and when you realize that then you're really happy because it means that you have reached something that you could have never reached before by yourself.
Presenter asks
34:31If you had to save just one of these discs, which would it be and why?
The last one, because I I cried my heart out. It's uh it's a ni wonderful singer and the beauti most beautiful words for a song.
“My mother never knew who she was.”
“I owned my face and I wanted to keep it.”
“When you love somebody, I think you have to wait also all your life.”
“I almost fainted. I almost faded it.”
“I would feel bad because I would feel like a prison.”
“If you don't feel like it, don't do it. But if you feel like it, then you have the time of your life.”