Lea Massari, Italian Cinema’s Anti-Diva, Dies at 91

Lea Massari, Italian Cinema’s Anti-Diva, Dies at 91

Lea Massari, the Italian actress and European cinema icon famous for her roles in Michelangelo Antonioni‘s L’Avventura (1960), Dino Risi’s A Difficult Life (1961) and Louis Malle‘s Murmur of the Heart (1971), has died. She was 91.

Massari died at her home in Rome on Monday, Italian media reported.

In a decades-long career that spanned films, television and theater, Massari played alongside the likes of Alain Delon, Jean Paul Belmondo, Michel Piccoli and Omar Sharif. She was a critical and audience favorite but shunned the spotlight. After retiring from acting more than 30 years ago, she rarely appeared in public.

Born Anna Maria Massatani on June 30, 1933 — she took the stage name Lea in honor of her fiancé, Leo, whom died in an accident shortly before they were to be married — her childhood was spent across Europe as her family followed her father, an engineer, to positions in Spain, France and Switzerland. Massatani studied architecture, working as a model to support herself, when she was introduced to the world of film by Oscar-winning costume designer Piero Gherardi (La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2), a family friend.

Her debut came with Mario Monicelli’s Forbidden (1955), playing a woman in a rugged Sardinian village who tries to help the local priest (Mel Ferrer) broker peace between warring clans. Fame came with her follow-up, Renato Castellani’s Dreams in a Drawer (1957), playing a young bride and ambitious student whose academic and other dreams are derailed when she becomes pregnant.

Among her most iconic performances were as Anna, the young woman who disappears mysteriously during a boating trip, in Antonioni’s modernist masterpiece L’Avventura; as Monica, the partner to a troubled teacher (Delon) who becomes romantically involved with one of his students, in Valerio Zurlini’s Indian Summer (1972); and as Clara, a mother with an uncomfortably close relationship to her teenage son, in Malle’s Oscar-nominated dramedy Murmur of the Heart.

Monicelli delivered a more grounded performance as Elena, the wife of an anti-Fascist intellectual (played by Alberto Sordi) in Dino Risi’s postwar classic A Difficult Life (1961), a role that earned her a special David di Donatello award, Italy‘s equivalent of the Oscars.

Later in her career, she would again play the wife of a political dissident in Francesco Rosi’s Christ Stopped at Eboli (1978), a biopic on Carlo Levi, whom Mussolini exiled to a remote village in Southern Italy. In lesser films, Massatani added a touch of class, as in Sergio Leone’s debut, the forgettable swords-and-sandals picture The Colossus of Rhodes (1961).

Beyond Italy, Massatani was a favorite of European auteurs, cast alongside Piccoli and Romy Schneider as part of a tragic love triangle in Claude Sautet’s The Things of Life (1970) and in a supporting role in Meetings With Anna (1978), from Belgian master Chantal Akerman.

She read for the main female role in Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2. But, Massatani later recalled, her old friend Piero Gherardi, whom she claimed preferred eventual star Anouk Aimée for the role, “dressed me up absurdly,” spoiling her chances.

Massatani married Carlo Bianchini, a former Alitalia pilot in 1963. They had no children and separated in 2004. After retiring from the screen and stage, she became a passionate advocate for animal rights and an anti-hunting campaigner.