Giulietta Masina

Giulia Anna "Giulietta" Masina (22 February 1921 – 23 March 1994) was an Italian film actress best known for her performances as Gelsomina in La Strada (1954) and Cabiria in Nights of Cabiria (1957), for which she won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival. Cinema historian Peter Bondanella described Masina's work as "masterful" and "unforgettable," and Charlie Chaplin, with whose work Masina's is often compared, called her "the actress who moved him most." Both La Strada and Nights of Cabiria won Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film and were described as having been "inspired" by Masina's "humanity." Life Giulia Anna Masina, the eldest of four children, was born in San Giorgio di Piano, near Bologna. Her father was a violinist and her mother was a schoolteacher. When Masina was four, her uncle took her to meet the Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello, who was later to win the Nobel Prize in literature. A few years later, when this uncle died, his widow, Masina's aunt, asked Masina's parents if they would allow her to come to Rome to stay with her. Masina's parents agreed, in part because they believed that in Rome Masina would have more success in the arts for which she was already demonstrating a unique talent.