Sandrelli, Stefania

(1946-)

   Actress. One of the most accomplished actresses of Italian postwar cinema, Sandrelli graduated to the screen after winning the Miss Cinema Viareggio beauty contest in 1960. Following a small part in Luciano Salce's Il federale (The Fascist, 1961), she played her first significant role as the beautiful young cousin for whom Baron Cefalu (Marcello Mastroianni) kills his wife in Pietro Germi's Divorzio all'italiana (Divorce Italian Style, 1961). She subsequently gave impressive performances as the victimized teenager in Germi's Sedotta e abbandonata (Seduced and Abandoned, 1964) and the defenseless Adriana in Antonio Pietrangeli's Io la conoscevo bene (I Knew Her Well, 1965). In the following years she played Clerici's wife in Bernardo Bertolucci's Il conformista (The Conformist, 1970), a much less malleable wife in Germi's Alfredo, Alfredo (1972), where she was pitted against Dustin Hoffman, and then gave one of her finest performances in Ettore Scola's C'eravamo tanto amati (We All Loved Each Other So Much, 1974). After a host of other films in the late 1970s she displayed her versatility but also caused something of a scandal when she starred in Tinto Brass's adaptation of Junichiro Tanizaki's explicitly erotic novel La chiave (The Key, 1983). In subsequent years she alternated between playing similar strongly erotic roles as in Paolo Quaregna's Una donna allo specchio (A Woman in the Mirror, 1984) and L'attenzione (Attention, 1984), directed by her husband, Giovanni Soldati, and much more demure and vulnerable characters such as the cheerful mother but suffering wife in Francesca Archibugi's Mignon e partita (Mignon Has Come to Stay, 1988), for which she received both a Nastro d'argento and a David di Donatello. After a host of other awards, especially for her performances in Scola's La cena (The Dinner, 1998) and Gabriele Muccino's L'ultimo bacio (One Last Kiss, 2001), in 2005 she was awarded a Golden Lion at the Venice Festival in recognition of her outstanding career.

   Historical Dictionary of Italian Cinema by Alberto Mira