Original subtitles

My grandmother was Hungarian, my grandfather was Hungarian.

They produced my mother.

My grandmother, on her second wedding, married a

Turin general.

She came to live in Rome, she brought

my mother to Rome, she studied in Rome,

and then we stayed here.

My father was a producer, he also produced

for Eurofilm.

Then he was an organiser for Piovra.

My father died, Germi, and with Germi's secretary,

he gave him a copy of Amici miei,

which my father brought to Frizi, and he

edited it.

Then my father became an organiser with Monicelli,

and he left the film for the tenth

or seventh film, because he was arguing with

I don't know who.

My father was a strange man, he left

at the age of 40 to do the

biological campaign, so he was also a bit

of an experimenter.

My career started in a very casual way,

because I didn't want to be an actress,

otherwise I would have turned to the experimental

centre, but I was preparing for the admission

exam at the Central Institute of Restoration.

One summer, I saw some of my photos

in a fashion service in Taglieforti, and I

was doing very bad things as a model,

because I was maintaining myself, even though I

was 19 years old, because my family was

in pieces, because there were so many stories.

I was maintaining myself in a large part.

These photos came on the table of Tonino

Cervi, who in the early summer of 1973

desperately sought a replacement for what today would

be called a sequel to a film he

had produced two years earlier with a very

young Ornella Muti, of which he wanted to

make a sequel, and Ornella Muti was busy

elsewhere, so he was looking for a replacement,

and it's strange, because he had ruined all

the 20-year-olds, 18-year-olds, 23

-year-olds on the market in Italy, Italian

or foreign, already professionally enrolled, rather than still

unknown.

But he wasn't convinced, so I was one

of the...

And he proposed to me to do this

test.

I said, why?

He wanted to meet me.

My, let's say, lousy model agency, because it

was also lousy, said, listen, they're looking for

you for a film.

I said, for what?

He said, for a film.

I said, why don't you go to the

appointment?

I, who had seen all of my greys,

I knew Gino Cervi, I really liked meeting

Tonino, because I was very fond, like all

Italians, of that image, right?

In fact, Tonino was a very fascinating man,

very...

And he met me, and this thing is

very funny, because then I went in a

strange dress, with a large straw hat, then

there were these zips, like now, it was

all...

I had a goatee.

And he said, listen, would you do a

test?

Well, why not?

I said so.

Then I went to do that test, there

were all the photographers, I didn't even know

who they were.

There's La Sarta, I see there's a costume,

and they tell me, you know, this is

the costume in the film of Patroni Grifia,

of O Frutello Crudelle, by Charlotte Rampling, which

was my absolute cult.

I was very happy to wear this costume.

They put this costume on me, and it

didn't close.

In no way.

They were missing, like this.

And so you understand, when you say, but

what do you remember about the test?

But I was a little girl, I remember

this dress that didn't close, which was the

origin of a frustration for me, because then

Twiggy and Veruschka were in fashion, they said,

but I...

Why doesn't the Rampling dress fit me?

I'm kidding.

But it's true, it was like that.

I did it for fun, just for fun,

playing, and I learned.

First day on the set, imagine that the

Palatine room, which, for those who don't know,

was a two-bedroom theater, between the Roman

ruins, behind the Colosseum, next to a park,

a wonderful place.

And there they had rebuilt this convent of

the 16th century.

So it was a fable.

I repeat, 18 and a half years.

It was like a fable in a fable.

The whole convent, the set designer brings me

to visit, he says, this will be your

cell.

Another interpreter was Katrine Spack, whom I remembered,

mythical, a few years earlier.

And these costumes of the 16th century, wonderful,

made by Tirelli.

And on the first day, I wake up

with an unconsciousness, studied, I was very serious.

I am half Hungarian, I have a tremendous

Austrian education, so I studied very seriously.

That is the other thing that distinguished me,

one of the reasons why the entrepreneurs pointed

me out, because I was a very serious

girl, on work, on schedules, on things, on

jokes, on my job.

And I introduce myself, I had no idea.

And I remember that everyone taught me, a

bit like a mascot.

No, don't move your head, don't look there,

look here, look at me, they made me

a dot, my first floor.

In short, it was really, it was really

a real, authentic game.

Take off your shirt.

Come on, take it off.

Come on!

Hurry up!

Think about something, I didn't even know, because

I was 18, I had been with a

five-year-old boy, we made love and

everything.

I didn't know that men could, how to

say, have fantasies about photos, do personal practices.

I didn't know, that is, when I was

18, I didn't know that this was used.

I thought, yes, cool, look at him.

I had some ingenuity, which now seem really,

it almost makes me laugh, but it was

like that.

Suddenly, having taken that step that my mother

wanted to take, in fact, it only broke

the heart of my great-grandfather, from Turin,

who obviously remained.

And I, jokingly, maybe I found the reason

that made me, my naked self, something almost

more morbid.

Because I was a good girl, well-educated,

who had only had a boy.

I was not a girl of the show,

without wanting anything, but with a sexual, erotic,

and disinvolved So I had this almost aggressive

and I was of a behavior, you understand,

I mean, so irrepressible.

So much so that in my career, maybe

I then became an object of desire, because

women who say no, but I certainly didn't

do it for an attitude, because I had

a Catholic education, ferocious.

So my undressing was a provocation to my

mother and my father, who had allowed themselves

to break a family in a dream two

years earlier, and they had left us really

exhausted, us children.

And so I believe that all this was

born because I wanted them to notice me.

Instead, the Italians noticed me and they didn't.

And then I paid a lot because it

didn't correspond to me, it didn't correspond to

my education, it didn't correspond to the fact

that I, at 13-14 years old, realized

that I was going against the taste of

the boys, and I liked the boys, and

strange things happened to me, like those banal

things of the boys, they turned off the

lights at parties and someone kissed me or

touched me, that I was so like this,

that I got engaged at 13 and a

half, with a boy, who is now a

cardiothoracic surgeon, we are best friends, we were

together for six years.

He was even of my first film, he

encouraged me, even though I was a medical

student, and then, in fact, it exploded in

my hand, so that's why I say, when

I, in 1976, I make all these films,

in 1975, Lattuada, Max von Sydow, but my

head, my heart, are on that little girl

who completely lost her orientation, to return to

your theme.

This, my nudity, in fact, I myself remain,

now, seeing it, I remain impressed, because there

is also a great pleasure, but there is

also a language like a violated candor.

Here, this is what I mean, there is

a violation of something, in the impudency and

in the extreme, then, natural freedom of my,

for example, poses, I think of a service

of Lattuada, who made confrontations for Playboy, and

that, where I, since at that time I

had chosen to be naked, I said, I,

however, things can only be at sea, on

the beach, and we go in these waterfalls,

and I felt only nature, I was part

of nature, so there was a naturalness, there

was no morbidity, I would never have accepted,

in fact, in my naivety, I insist, that

then I seemed presumptuous, I always said, yes,

but I'm naked, I don't have the rags

on me, which recall, that is, there was

no friendship, there was a kind of ecstasy,

but also violated, certainly, my education was, I

had it self-violated, so, I think that

troubled, because, in fact, I realized over time

to have been object, however, of a great

passion, although perhaps solitary, of men, but particular,

that is, which involved perhaps more than the

physical fact, I don't know.

It's not bad the day, eh?

Lea.

It wasn't that, the worst thing, don't believe

her.

I just hope that they kill you and

that they do it soon, because you are

crazier than them, you know, even worse than

them.

Let's go, we'll spend the night in the

woods, tomorrow the police will have already calmed

down.

You promise, don't you?

I did some things, probably provocatively, thinking that

everything would remain, gestures of breaking, do you

understand?

Yes, and that was very strong too, because

anyway, afterwards I paid a lot for the

consequences, because you can't be incoherent, but when

you are young or you have the coherence

of education, but if education goes to pieces,

because the family goes to pieces, you have

to create a new morality and you don't

know what yours is.

So, youth is made to build the person

that I will be, that I am today,

right?

And so, thinking back at that time, I

remember that I was very embarrassed, why?

Because I also saw myself in a role

that didn't recognize me, despite the fact that

I had made these photos, Luca Elini made

me take those photos in my first film

with Frontoni, then, you know, I found myself

in a context of people for good, very

nice, I didn't even understand that I was

in the absurd backstage of the undergrowth of

the bad, no, no, I was with the

son of Gino Cervi, I was with Enrico

Luccherini, who was a gentleman even then, I

mean, a friend of Visconti, I mean, so

maybe not even then, then, when this popularity

a bit random, it didn't correspond to me,

I mean, I was a girl very different

from what and in my opinion this contradiction

made me have a lot of pleasure from

people and then also to love well, after

this affection became very big, but because I

was very lost and in my opinion you

could feel it, I didn't have that, how

can I say, between quality and security, precisely,

of the girls who already then, but today

are evident, no?

In the world of television, that kind of,

no, I wasn't like that, I was a

stranger, in my opinion, if I had to

define myself, I would say that in those

years, the first years of cinema, I was

strange, think that four and a half months

of shooting of Cuore di Cane, Fonsido, that

terrified me, I mean, it terrified me, it

scared me even in life, in fact, we

met three years ago at a festival, he,

nice, he saw me and he called me

on stage and I said, but you imagine

how much fear I had of you, that

was so austere, however, we were shooting at

Cinecittà, Anni di Piombo, everything closed, everything under

fire, and I remember my basket, because there

was no table, I went to eat it

alone on the edge of the Rex, there

was the lake of Cinecittà and the Rex

of Amarcord, no?

And I did four months there alone, in

the sense that I was another thing, I

didn't connect with anyone, I didn't have anything

to do with it.

Which distributor?

The one under the Ark of Peace.

When?

This morning around nine.

How many are there?

Three.

Excuse me.

Yes?

What?

No, no, no, I can't now, no, no,

later, I'll call you later, yes, ok, bye,

bye.

Tell me something, are these guys armed or

not?

They have a revolver like a cowboy, actually

two, but they're made of plastic, toys.

Listen, how do you know all these things?

One of them is my boyfriend, I don't

want him to get hurt, especially him, but

it seems they don't realize that after all

it's always a robbery.

You know, I saw it again, they gave

it to me and there again the passionate

girl comes back, because again I'm very thin,

very strange, overcast, very, in my opinion, very

elegant, you know, in simplicity, so I'm not,

no, I mean, I'm impressed, I realized that

I was still impressed, there's something that I

remember about these scenes, even though it's an

action movie, no?

In fact, today, as a consumptive, even if

it's temporary, a consumptive, I hope there is,

to continue to live, but certainly actually the

quality I had it from the beginning is

that in the long run I saw myself

received in a way that I wasn't and

therefore forced into the clothes of someone that

I wasn't, but maybe I was wrong, because

then maybe the audience is always right and

maybe that was me, so I don't know

if you can define the high point of

quality, because in fact Lattuada with Bulgaakov, with

Max von Sydow, but then Agnese goes to

die, Montaldo, with Ingrid Tullin, I mean, I

have a series of films, so in fact

I always expected the jump in quality that

was finally, because I in this terribly provincial

way of the Italians, I didn't understand why,

when they were looking for a certain type

of blonde, they took Dominique Sandà and not

me, do you understand?

Because I was still more like her in

life than like one of the TV with

boobs.

And yet this thing, then over time I

also understood that probably it was also a

matter of personality, because if you want to

be an actor, you are a person, you

are a person usually, my colleagues, however, they

are people who choose a job in which

to hide themselves, no?

That is, the choice of acting and acting

is different from you in some way, even

putting you at the service.

I was chosen by the cinema, I said

yes by chance, but it was a personality.

So it is very superimposed, which gave me,

gave place in my private life to liveliness,

to a very full life, which often collided,

overcame what must be the neutrality a little

of the actor, at the service of a

story, at the service of a character.

So I also understand how perhaps, now I

understand it, as for some authors and directors

it could be difficult to take as an

interpreter a person who certainly as soul, head

and physical was right, but whose impact, in

which, whose image in some way was a

little overwhelming.