Dino De Laurentiis

Agostino "Dino" De Laurentiis (; 8 August 1919 – 10 November 2010) was an Italian and naturalized-American film producer. Along with Carlo Ponti, he was one of the producers who brought Italian cinema to the international scene at the end of World War II. He produced or co-produced more than 500 films, of which 38 were nominated for Academy Awards. He also had a brief acting career in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Early life De Laurentiis was born at Torre Annunziata in the province of Naples, and grew up selling spaghetti made by his father's pasta factory. He studied at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome in 1937 and 1938, when his studies were interrupted by the outbreak of World War II. Career Film production De Laurentiis produced his first film, L'ultimo Combattimento, in 1941. In 1946 his company, the Dino de Laurentiis Cinematografica, moved into production. In the early years, De Laurentiis produced Italian neorealist films such as Bitter Rice (1949) and the early Fellini works La Strada (1954) and Nights of Cabiria (1956), often in collaboration with producer Carlo Ponti.