Rambo on Giorgia Melnio’s mind after a year as Italian PM

John Rambo, the musclebound icon of 1980s films, has emerged as an unlikely political inspiration for Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

Boris Johnson notoriously admired the mayor from Jaws, ­Donald Trump professed his ­penchant for Jean-Claude van Damme, while Rishi Sunak is known as a Star Wars fan who longed to be a Jedi knight when he was younger.

But John Rambo, the musclebound icon of 1980s films, known for blowing up enemies, baring his torso and speaking little, has emerged as an unlikely political inspiration for Giorgia Meloni.

The Italian Prime Minister has complained that her private life has become public property since she won high office, and admitted this week that it had been a “tough” year. Then she added: “This year, everything that could happen has happened. But the ­secret is to live it day by day, as Rambo would say.”

Her reference was to the 1985 action film Rambo: First Blood Part II, in which the bare-chested former soldier John Rambo, played by Sylvester Stallone, slaughters countless opponents while freeing US prisoners left in Vietnam at the end of the war.

Wandering past the wreckage of a helicopter at the end of the film, he demands that America love him as much as he loves America. Asked how he will live out his life, he replies: “Day by day.”

Meloni, 46, spoke after a year in office during which she left her partner and the father of her daughter, television journalist Andrea Giambruno, after leaked recordings of him propositioning work colleagues were aired.

Last weekend she was photographed with a cover on her phone inscribed with anti-anxiety phrases such us “I am loved” and “It’s okay for me to say no for my mental health”. It was chosen for her by her seven-year-old daughter.

Interviewed on Italian radio, Ms Meloni said her privacy had vanished since becoming the country’s first female prime minister last year. “I don’t have many ­secrets left as my life is all in the open,” she said. “My personal life has been discussed at times without pity, but you put on your ­helmet and you fight.”

Now entering her second year in power, Ms Meloni faces a migration crisis, a sluggish economy and a balancing act between the EU officials she is forging a working relationship with and her coalition ally Matteo Salvini, who berates those same officials.

After being told by the interviewer that she was the fourth most powerful woman in the world, she joked: “That gives you an idea of the state we are in.”

The Times