Monica Bellucci on using her body as a 'working tool'
It's not her looks that have opened doors for the enduring actor, who started as a model, it's her attitude.
It's not her looks that have opened doors for the enduring actor, who started as a model, it's her attitude.
Monica Bellucci is a beautiful woman.
Despite being hot and knowing it, the 58-year-old Italian star has been a refreshing addition to Hollywood over the years.
She's pushed envelopes, never been afraid to use her body as a "working tool" and caused "controversy" playing the oldest Bond girl in history when she appeared alongside Daniel Craig in Spectre when she was 51-years-old.
“I couldn’t believe how people were talking about ‘the older woman’, how I was older than James Bond,” she chuckles. “But it was a good experience for me. It was interesting to show that even if a woman is no longer young, she still has femininity and sensuality," Bellucci told The Oz.
Beauty, she said is skin deep and it’s what’s underneath that matters, especially as you grow older.
“The beauty of youth finishes and then another kind of beauty comes. It’s about experience and knowledge and compassion, things that we gain with age. Your face becomes more interesting if you accept it’s ok to have wrinkles. It doesn’t mean you’re not beautiful - it’s another kind of beauty. Women become guilty as they grow older, but there’s nothing to be guilty about. Life goes on.”
The former model turned actress has never shied away from her devastatingly conventional good looks however her latest role shocked her.
She's set to play Anita Ekberg in the Italian mockumentary The Girl in the Fountain, which was part of the Lumiere Film Festival programme in Lyon recently.
The film is relevant to Bellucci’s experience as it focuses on Ekberg, a woman who was known as a sex symbol and had to deal with that image throughout her career.
The concept is that Bellucci is to play the stunning, voluptuous Swedish actress in a film about her life. We watch actual interviews with Ekberg and how Bellucci prepares to play her.
“It was incredible that the director, Antongiulio Panizzi, thought about me, because I'm so Mediterranean and Anita was so Nordic, blonde with blue eyes,” Bellucci said. “But when I said yes to the project, I knew I had to inhabit her in order for the audience to discover her and to get to know her as a person and as an artist.”
Who?
Ekberg’s story is a cautionary tale of a gorgeous, feisty woman who was chewed up by Hollywood and the moviemaking system in general.
A former Miss Sweden, she was among the finalists in the Miss Universe pageant when she was picked up to act for Universal Studios.
She would later be hailed as the new Marilyn Monroe by Paramount Pictures.
Her greatest early opportunity was her casting in 1956’s War and Peace, which she shot in Rome, alongside Mel Ferrer and Audrey Hepburn.
Though she became as famous for her affairs with Hollywood's leading men including Frank Sinatra, Tyrone Power, Yul Brynner and Rod Taylor and Errol Flynn who were both Australian.
It was by playing the unattainable dream woman in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita that she would achieve iconic status. The scene where she cavorts in Rome's Trevi Fountain alongside Marcello Mastroianni is one of cinema’s most famous.
Afterwards Ekberg stayed in Rome and lived there for the rest of her life, ultimately dying in poverty at the age of 83.
“In 1956 she won a Golden Globe as a new star of the year,” Bellucci explained of Ekberg’s award for Blood Alley, where she co-starred with John Wayne and Lauren Bacall.
“So when she arrived in Italy she was already an international star. The Girl in the Fountain is interesting for me because it’s about a moment of history where two systems confronted each other, the star system of post-war Italy and the system of today, the woman of then and the woman of now. It was a special moment in Italy with all those incredible directors, Fellini, Rossellini, Visconti and De Sica. And she arrived like a tornado. This blonde bombshell was so free compared to the Italian women of the time, who barely left the kitchen or the house. So she represented a striking contrast of cultures.”
Was Bellucci ever pressured to stay in the kitchen?
“Today it’s different, but for actresses at that time, they created the illusion where the person and the image were the same thing, as with Marilyn Monroe. Today we know they are not the same.
"The idea of the diva doesn't exist anymore."
Like Ekberg, she has had to contend with the typecasts her beauty has thrown her way.
“Of course, being pretty helped open doors, it would be a lie to say otherwise, I was shy even though I talk a lot,” she smiled, “So beauty meant people came to me.
“But beauty only lasts five minutes if there’s nothing behind. What you must know is that, from the age of 40, they offer you roles as a witch!” she said, mischievously.
“But you mustn’t cry, you must take on these roles: A whole new range [of roles] opens up. Before that, you were too young and pretty, and you must welcome this opportunity.”
Bellucci said she likes the attitudes of young actresses and women in the current age.
“They're not scared to say they're fragile. But back then women had to be perfect with their makeup and the way they dressed. No faults.”
Even in her time Bellucci admits there had been pressures, less freedom.
“You couldn't say when things were wrong, you know? But today they say, ‘Okay, it doesn't work, I'm not fine,’ and this is nice. They are even different in the way the dress. There are no major barriers between girls and boys. Everything is more natural. I think they've got a whole liberty happening. Even with sexuality, you know, it's okay to be bisexual.”
In her earlier days Bellucci was unafraid of performing nudity in her films, which she says came from her starting out as a model with Dior and Dolce & Gabbana, for whom she has modelled as recently as 2019.
Now her 18-year-old daughter Deva, from her previous marriage to French actor Vincent Cassel, now works for the company, initially starting out at their muse at age 15.
“She’s just finished high school and now she's shooting her first movie in Italy,” her mum said proudly. “She's very happy. You love your kids and it's beautiful to see them fly and become independent.”
Has Deva left home?
“No, no, no,” Bellucci replied, chuckling and waving her index finger. “Italian mothers, you know!” She adds that her 12-year-old daughter, Leonie, is acting in the theatre and loves it too.
The girls live in France where they maintain a close friendship with Cassel. They have been encouraged to speak many languages after living with their parents in Italy, Brazil and England when they were young.
Cassel, 55, who comes from a famous acting family, has appeared in numerous international productions including the HBO series Westworld, and is now married to French model Tina Kukaney, who is 30 years his junior, and they have a young daughter.
Bellucci will not discuss her lovelife, but for several years was in a relationship with 40-year-old Parisian sculptor and former model Nicolas Lefebre, which has ended.
She does not mind any age difference.
“I think after divorce each one has the right to keep on going with their lives and make their own choices,” she said. “Vincent and I have a good relationship and what’s most important is that we are the father and mother of our kids.”
What's next for Bellucci
In her youth Bellucci was known for playing screen goddesses and exerting a regal screen presence.
She was a gold-encrusted scantily clad Cleopatra in the French box office hit Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra, Persephone in The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions which filmed in Sydney and a ravishing 500-year-old queen intent on restoring her beauty as it fades in The Brothers Grimm, where she starred alongside Heath Ledger and Matt Damon.
She wore a stunning red gown at she presented Tim Burton with his Prix Lumiere and generally added colour to the festivities.
READ MORE: 'I was Dumbo': Tim Burton on escaping 'horrible' Disney
Bellucci has more projects on the boil than pots and pans during Sauce Day. Her next projects also include teaming with Toni Collette for a comedy titled Mafia Mamma and appearing alongside Liam Neeson and Guy Pearce as a "real villain" in Memory.
She is not known for comedy.
“It’s not my world,” she admitted. She was happy to send herself up in an episode of Call My Agent! and now tickles her funny bone the action comedy Mafia Mamma, helmed by Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke and produced by Collette. which just wrapped in Italy.
It follows Collette - as a suburban American woman who inherits her grandfather’s Mafia empire and guided by the Firm’s trusted consigliere - as she defies everyone’s expectations, including her own, as the new head of the family business.
“It was so much fun,” Bellucci said while not wanting to give much away. “I haven’t seen it yet but it’s going to be hilarious.”
She was wanting to work with a woman director, which is unusual for her.
“Yes, I was curious. I really had a great time working with Catherine. And Toni's amazing. She has such energy. It’s a mafia story, but with a feminine twist.”
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