Valentina Elena Cortese (Milan, January 1, 1923 – Milan, July 10, 2019) Italian actress, considered one of the last divas of Italian cinema and theater. Born in Milan to a family originally from Stresi, she spent her childhood in the Cremasque territories, between Anjadello (Agnadello) and Rivolta d'Adda. Very young, she fell in love with the conductor Victor de Sabata, thirty one years older than her, married with children. She then left high school to study in Rome, where she graduated from the Academy of Dramatic Art. Made her film debut in Guido Salvini's L`orizzonte dipinto (1940). She also acts in the theater, but in 1941 she was signed by "Scalera Film" for her face with delicate features, in the "white telephones" series. 
Her first important role was that of Lisabetta in the film "La cena delle beffe" (1942) directed by Alessandro Blasetti. Endowed with a strong and magnetic stage presence, despite her small physique, thanks to films such as Carmine Gallone's "Queen of Navarre" (1942), Gennaro Righelli's "Orizzonte di sangue" (1943) and " Quartetto pazzo” (1945) by Guido Salvini, Valentina Cortese became the name of the announcement of the cinema of the forties. He also appeared in "Roma citta libera" (1946) and in 1948 he participated in "I miserabili" directed by Riccardo Freda, in which he played alongside the great actor Marcello Mastroianni. They would play together in "Lulu" (1953) by Fernando Cerchio. In 1948, he arrived in Hollywood, where he signed a contract with "20th Century Fox" and worked here together with famous actors, such as James Stewart and Spencer Tracy in Richard Thorpe's "Malasia" (1949), also with Orson Welles in " Cagliostro” directed by Gregory Ratoff (1949). Then the director Jules Dassin activates him in "The Corsairs of the Road" (1949), in front of Richard Contes. In 1951 she starred in Robert Wise's I'm Afraid of Him, on the set of which she met her future husband Richard Basehart. In 1952 he teamed up with the very young and not yet famous Audrey Hepburn, with whom he remained friends, in Thorold Dickinson's The Secret People. 
While Cortese was still working in Hollywood, he played in the film "La contessa bareza" (1954) by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, alongside Ava Gardner, Humphrey Bogart and Rossano Brazzi, in Italy he performed "Le amiche" (1955) by Michelangelo Antonioni, a film thanks to for which she won the Silver Ribbon for Best Supporting Actress. In Spain, he plays in "Calabuig" (1957) by local director Luis García Berlanga, opposite Edmund Gwenn. In 1957, he also played in "Kean – Genius and Recklessness", (performed and directed by Vittorio Gassman). In 1958, Cortese temporarily retired from the stage after her ill-fated marriage to her colleague Richard Basehart, whom she married on March 24, 1951, and from whom she divorced 9 years later, in 1960. From this marriage, Jackie was born. , who also became an actress. After the pregnancy, the actress Cortese had to give up a proposal offered directly by the great Charlie Chaplin for the female lead in the film "Limelight" (1952), which was later assigned to Claire Bloom. Meanwhile, Cortese, however, returned to the spotlight in Italy with the following films, Richard Fleischer's "Barabbas" (1961), together with the big names of world cinema Anthony Quinn, Silvana Mangano, Vittorio Gassman and Ernest Borgnine, and the other film "The Girl Who Knew Too Much" (1963) by Mario Bava. 
In 1964, he did a duet with Ingrid Bergman in "Revenge of the Lady" directed by Bernhard Wicki. The year after, there was director Federico Fellini in "Giulietta degli spiriti". In 1966 he joined Michèle Mercier and Daniel Gélin in the film "The Angelic Adventurer – Black Sun" directed by Denys de La Patellière, which was followed by a participation in "Excuse me, let's make love?" (1967) to Vittorio Caprioli. She was soon called back to the United States, alongside Rossella Falk and Gabriele Tinti, to play a sophisticated Italian countess in Robert Aldrich's When a Star Dies (1968), with Kim Novak and Peter Finch . Among the various films in which she participated in Italy in those years, was the bizarre comedy "Toh, grandma is dead"! (1969) to Mario Monicelli and "The Dramatic Accusation of Murder for a Student" (1972) to Mauro Bolognini. After several participations in important Italian television productions, such as "Buddenbrook" (1971), directed by Edmo Fenoglio, meeting Giorgio Strehler, and in the theater she further showed her qualities as a dramatic actress. In 1970, he directed Maximilian Schell in the Swiss production film "First Love". Two minor but important roles brought Valentina Cortese back to international prominence in the early 1970s: in Gérard Brach's The Boat on the Grass (1970), with Claude Jade and Jean-Pierre Cassel, she played the exalted mother of John McEnery; and then starred with Richard Burton, Alain Delon and Romy Schneider in Joseph Losey's The Assassination of Trotsky (1972), in which she played Lev Trotsky's wife. 
It should be noted that after these two films, she achieved one of her biggest successes on the big screen, at the age of 50, with François Truffaut's Effetto notte (1973), in which she plays a not-so-young diva. and fragile of the film Severine, alongside Jean-Pierre Léaud, Jean-Pierre Aumont and Jacqueline Bisset. The film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and Cortese received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. The winner of that year for that category, Ingrid Bergman, during the awards ceremony publicly apologized to her colleague and friends Cortese, saying that according to her it was the Italian actress who fully deserved that award. 
Despite the intense theatrical activity and roles in international productions, in the seventies Cortese continued to participate in Italian films of various genres (comedy, detective, horror), but sometimes of modest importance even in the commercial plan. In her last American film, James Goldstone's No More Escape (1980), she worked again with William Holden, Paul Newman and Jacqueline Bisset. In 1987, she participated in the film "Via Montenapoleone" by Carlo Vanzinas, portraying the role of an upper-class mother unable to accept her son's homosexuality, played by Luca Barbareschi. In 1988 she took part in Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen in which she has the dual role of Daisy / Queen of the Moon, alongside Robin Williams. Important and appreciated was the partnership with director Franco Zeffirelli, who activated her with the film "Fratello sole, sorella luna" (1971) and continued her performance with the television drama "Jesus of Nazareth" (1977), where the actress played the role of Herodias and continues again in the films "Il giovane toscanini" (1988) and "Storia di una blackcap" (1993), the last film in which the actress participated. Her last television appearance dates back to 2012 in the program "Che tempo che fa", where she presented the autobiography "Quanti sono i domani passati" by Enrico Rotelli. In 2017, director Francesco Patierno paid homage with the film Diva!. In 2015, she lost her son, a fact that will cause great pain to the actress, who from here on will reduce her public appearances more and more. Sick for some time, she passed away on July 10, 2019 at her home in Milan, at the age of 96. (C) Reserved Material | The exclusivity on this page is dated April 25, 2022 _________________ Albanian cinematography a page in activity since 2013. Star of World Cinema – Valentina Elena Cortese
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