Charming, melancholic star of the 1970s who appeared in a string of Lina Wertmuller films, including "Love and Anarchy" (1973), "Swept Away" (1974), and "Seven Beauties" (1975), the classically handsome Giancarlo Giannini has become an international star and in recent years has frequently appeared in US film and TV projects. He has been at his best portraying Everymen who are imperfect, but one roots for them as they buck the system that often barely knows he exists.
Giannini originally earned a degree in electrical engineering, but, by 1961, had turned to acting, making his stage debut as Puck in a production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in Italy. He went to Rome to study acting and in 1964 played Romeo in Zeffirelli's stage production of "Romeo and Juliet". His screen debut was in "Fango sulla Metropoli" (1965) and the following year he was cast by stage director Lina Wertmuller in "Two and Two Are No Longer Four". Also in 1966, the director hired Giannini for the feature "Rita ka Zanzara/Rita the Mosquito", beginning a collaboration which would eventually see them forming a production company together. Under Wertmuller's direction, Giannini won the Cannes Film Festival acting honors in 1973 for "Love and Anarchy", in which he was a back country man who wants to assassinate Mussolini but, instead, falls in the love with a prostitute at the brothel in which he is hiding out. He had starred for Wertmuller in "The Seduction of Mimi" (1972), in the title role of a man who gets himself into sexual and political trouble. In 1974 came "Swept Away . . . by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August", in which Giannini was a worker on a yacht bossed around by his petulant female boss (Mariangela Melato) who swap roles when they become shipwrecked and return to their old ways upon rescue. It was a major success for both Giannini and Wertmuller worldwide.
Giannini produced and starred in Wertmuller's "Seven Beauties" (1975), which followed a small-time Casanova through World War II and survival in a concentration camp. Giannini was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his work assuring him international stardom. He had appeared in a US film as an Italian villager helping to hide wine from the Nazis in "The Secret of Santa Vittoria" (1969), a vehicle for Anthony Quinn. In 1984, he starred in "American Dreamer", as a man who becomes caught up in JoBeth Williams' misguided sense of adventure. "Saving Grace" (1986) cast Giannini as the provider of wisdom for pope-in-disguise Tom Conti. Giannini was the father in Francis Ford Coppola's "Life With Zoe" segment of "New York Stories" (1989) and somehow got himself entangled with John Candy and James Belushi in the forgettable "Once Upon a Crime" (1992). He was the winemaker father-in-law of Keanu Reeves in "A Walk in the Clouds" (1995). In addition to producing "Seven Beauties", Giannini has also worked in that capacity on "Buone notize/Good News" (1979) and directed two features "I Capitoni" (1984) and "Ternosecco" (1987). He also co-wrote and starred in the latter, playing a man who married the daughter of the local lottery merchant and gets involved in the local criminal world.
His TV work has been infrequent. Giannini was leading man to Joan Collins in the miniseries "Sins" (CBS, 1986) and played Laban, the scheming father-in-law of "Jacob" in the 1994 TNT version of the biblical story.
Copyright © Baseline 2006.