Anna Magnani

Her film career had spread over almost 20 years before she gained international renown as Pina in Roberto Rossellini's neorealist milestone Roma, città aperta (Rome, Open City, 1945). Her harrowing death scene remains one of cinema's most devastating moments. The film was about Italy's final days under German occupation during World War II where Magnani gave a "brilliant performance" as a woman who dies fighting to protect her husband, an underground fighter against the Nazis.

In Italy (and gradually elsewhere) she soon became established as a star, although she lacked the conventional beauty and glamour often associated with the term. Slightly plump and rather short in stature with a face framed by unkempt raven hair and eyes encircled by deep, dark shadows, she smouldered with seething earthiness and volcanic temperament. Rossellini, whom she called "this forceful, secure courageous man", was her lover at the time, and she collaborated with him on other films. Read Less

It co-starred Burt Lancaster, and was Magnani's first English speaking role in a mainstream Hollywood movie, winning her the Academy Award for Best Actress. Lancaster, who played the role of a "lusty truck driver", said that "if she had not found acting as an outlet for her enormous vitality, she would have become 'a great criminal'".

Film historian John DiLeo has written that Magnani's acting in the film "displays why she is inarguably one of the half dozen greatest screen actresses of all time", and added: "Whenever Magnani laughs or cries (which is often), it's as if you've never seen anyone laugh or cry before: has laughter ever been so burstingly joyful or tears so shatteringly sad?

Tennessee Williams wrote the screenplay and based the character of Serafina on Magnani, as Williams was a great admirer of her acting abilities, and he even stipulated that the movie "must star what Time described as 'the most explosive emotional actress of her generation, Anna Magnani." In his Memoirs, Williams described why he insisted on Magnani playing this role: "Anna Magnani was magnificent as Serafina in the movie version of Tattoo. She was as unconventional a woman as I have known in or out of my professional world, and if you understand me at all, you must know that in this statement I am making my personal estimate of her honesty, which I feel was complete. She never exhibited any lack of self-assurance, any timidity in her relations with that society outside of whose conventions she quite publicly existed. she looked absolutely straight into the eyes of whomever she confronted and during that golden time in which we were dear friends, I never heard a false word from her mouth." Read Less