Lydia Alfonsi (28 April 1928 – 21 September 2022) was an Italian actress.
Life and career
Born Lidia Alfonsi in
Parma
Parma (; ) is a city in the northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna known for its architecture, Giuseppe Verdi, music, art, prosciutto (ham), Parmesan, cheese and surrounding countryside. With a population of 198,986 inhabitants as of 2025, ...
into a wealthy middle-class family, Alfonsi interrupted her accounting studies at a young age to pursue a career in theater.
In 1946 she won in a national competition for amateur dramatics and was noticed by one of the judges, the director
Anton Giulio Bragaglia
__NOTOC__
Anton Giulio Bragaglia (11 February 1890 – 15 July 1960) was a pioneer in Italian Futurist photography and Futurist cinema. A versatile and intellectual artist with wide interests, he wrote about film, theatre, and dance.
Early lif ...
, who immediately hired her for his stage company.
Soon she was cast in leading roles in dramas and often in classical works, including many Greek tragedies.
In 1957 she made her film debut. In 1960 she began a professional and romantic relationship with television director
Giacomo Vaccari, starring in several successful
RAI
(), commercially styled as since 2000 and known until 1954 as (RAI), is the national public broadcasting company of Italy, owned by the Ministry of Economy and Finance. RAI operates many terrestrial and subscription television channels a ...
TV-dramas directed by him. Their relationship ended with his death in a car accident in 1963.
In the mid-1970s Alfonsi semi-retired, making sporadic appearances only in 1988 (with the TV movie ''Una lepre con la faccia da bambina''), in 1990 (in
Gianni Amelio
Gianni Amelio (born 20 January 1944) is an Italian film director.
Early life
Amelio was born in San Pietro di Magisano, province of Catanzaro, Calabria. His father moved to Argentina soon after his birth. He spent his youth and adolescence with ...
's
''Open Doors'') and in 1997 (in
Roberto Benigni
Roberto Remigio Benigni ( , ; born 27 October 1952) is an Italian actor, comedian, screenwriter, and film director. He gained international recognition for writing, directing, and starring in the Holocaust comedy drama film ''Life Is Beautifu ...
's ''
Life Is Beautiful
''Life Is Beautiful'' (, ) is a 1997 Italian period comedy-drama film directed by and starring Roberto Benigni, who co-wrote the film with Vincenzo Cerami. Benigni plays Guido Orefice, a Jewish Italian bookshop owner, who employs his imagin ...
'').
Alfonsi was appointed
Grand Officer of the Italian Republic.
Alfonsi died on 21 September 2022, at the age of 94.
Filmography
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Alfonsi, Lydia
1928 births
2022 deaths
Actors from Parma
Actresses from Emilia-Romagna
Italian stage actresses
Italian film actresses
20th-century Italian actresses
Italian television actresses
Italian voice actresses
Accademia Nazionale di Arte Drammatica Silvio D'Amico alumni
Grand Officers of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic