Top 10 Italian Actors of All Time

Marcello Mastroianni had a gift few actors possess: he could do nothing and still be the most interesting person in the room. Federico Fellini understood that like no one else. In La Dolce Vita (1960) he played a journalist wandering through wealthy Rome without truly belonging anywhere; much of the film is a portrait of his face as he simply watches. In 8½ (1963) he played Fellini's alter ego, a director who's stuck and can't let go of his past. In Divorce Italian Style (1961) he was a Sicilian nobleman who wants to get rid of his wife without divorcing her. Nominated for three Oscars, he never won one, one of the Academy's bigger injustices.

Vittorio Gassman started in theater, and that remained visible all his life. There was always something theatrical in his presence, a certain grandeur, but he tamed it so it worked on screen instead of exploding. In Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958), one of the funniest Italian films ever, he played a failed boxer in an ensemble of clumsy burglars. In Il Sorpasso (1962) he played a shameless bon vivant who drags a shy law student on a road trip through the Italian summer; his energy is infectious and his charm almost makes you forget how dangerous his character is. Profumo di Donna (1974) was later remade as Scent of a Woman with Al Pacino, who won an Oscar, but Gassman's original is simply better.

Gian Maria Volonté is the name most often missing from international lists of great European actors, and that's incomprehensible. He started as the villain in Sergio Leone's westerns A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and For a Few Dollars More (1965), so magnetically dangerous that Leone brought him back. But that was only the beginning. In Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970) he played a police chief who commits a murder and dares others to catch him, one of the most disturbing character studies in Italian film. In Sacco and Vanzetti (1971) he gave one of the two anarchists a dignity that made the film a powerful political statement. Volonté died in 1994 during a film shoot.

Alberto Sordi was the mirror Italy didn't always want to look into but couldn't resist. His characters were often weak, vain, cowardly and opportunistic, yet irresistibly human. In An American in Rome (1954) he played an Italian so fascinated by America that he tries to live like a cowboy in Rome, ridiculous and touching at the same time. He was often said to play Italians as they really were, not as they wanted to see themselves, and in films like Il boom (1963) and Viva Italia! (1977) he sharpened that social criticism further. At his funeral in 2003, hundreds of thousands of Romans came to say goodbye.

Ugo Tognazzi had a face that could be comic and intensely sad at the same time, and he knew exactly which side to show to move an audience. In Marco Ferreri's La Grande Bouffe (1973) he played one of four men who literally eat themselves to death in a Paris villa, one of the most provocative films of the '70s; his role as the obsessive cook is both the most extreme and most endearing part of it. In My Friends (Amici miei, 1975), a comedy about a group of aging friends who play pranks to make life bearable, he shows his warmer side. Both are equally convincing.

In Italy, Roberto Benigni has been a phenomenon for decades: comedian, filmmaker and national institution. Abroad he's known mainly for Life Is Beautiful (1997), the story of a father who tries to shield his son from the horrors of the Holocaust by turning it into a game, a premise that seems impossible on paper. Benigni made it work. He co-wrote and directed the film himself, and it won three Oscars. His legendary acceptance, climbing over the seats with joy, is one of the most memorable moments in Oscar history. He became the first actor to win Best Actor for a non-English-speaking role.

In Italy, Totò is folklore. His face, with its rubbery features and eyes that could go in every direction, was an instrument he honed for decades on stage before he made a single film. He made more than a hundred films, the best of them timeless. Pier Paolo Pasolini cast him in The Hawks and the Sparrows (1966), a Marxist parable with a talking crow, and Totò played it with a seriousness that made the absurdity even greater. He died a year later, almost completely blind, but Italy has never let him go.

Nino Manfredi was an actor you always believed, not because he was spectacular but because he never did anything that didn't ring true. In Ettore Scola's We All Loved Each Other So Much (1974) he played a man who slowly trades his ideals for comfort. In Bread and Chocolate (1974) he played an Italian guest worker in Switzerland so desperate to assimilate that he bleaches his hair. It's funny, painful and completely believable.

Massimo Troisi knew he was seriously ill. He had a heart condition, and doctors advised surgery before he started Il Postino. He postponed it, afraid he wouldn't otherwise be able to finish the film, and died just twelve hours after the last scene was shot, at only 41. Il Postino (1994) became a worldwide success. Troisi plays a simple postman who learns how metaphors work, and his vulnerability in that role is now impossible to separate from the knowledge that he was dying during filming. One of the most beautiful performances in Italian history.

Lino Ventura was born in Parma but grew up in France. He started as a wrestler and entered film through Jacques Becker. Ventura had a body and face that radiated authority without saying a word. His career in French crime cinema is impressive, with classics like Le Deuxième Souffle (1966) and The Sicilian Clan (1969). He fit perfectly into the world of silent men with dangerous looks. Good acting doesn't need a passport.