Roberto Benigni

Benigni is currently directing a new film called "La tigre et la neve", shooting in Rome, Tunisia, and Umbria. Johnny Mack Brown died of heart failure in 1974 and was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. Benigni was censored again in the 1980s for calling the Pope John Paul II something impolite during an important live TV show. His famously mangled English is a put-on, apparently. In recognition of his contribution to the motion picture industry, Brown was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6101 Hollywood Blvd. It was an unprecedented fact, given that until that moment Italian politicians were proverbially serious and formal (and Berlinguer was perhaps the most serious one at all); it represented a breaking point, after which politicians experimented newer habits and "public manners", started frequenting less formal happenings and, generally speaking, modified their lifestyle in order to show a more popular, "familiar" look. He returned more than ten years later to appear in secondary roles in a few western style films. Little after, he appeared during a public political demonstration of the Italian Communist Party (of which he was a sympathiser), and in this occasion he took in his arms and dandled the national leader Enrico Berlinguer, a very serious figure. When the western genre experienced a sharp drop in box office popularity, Johnny Mack Brown went into retirement in 1953.

A great scandal for the time, the series was suspended due to censorship. Brown also starred in four serials for Universal Studios and was a hero to millions of young children at movie theaters and on their television screens. Very popular in Italy, Benigni became famous in the 1970s for a shocking TV series called Televacca, by Renzo Arbore, in which he interpreted a particular hymn on specific biological functions. After a few more films, Brown returned to making exclusively westerns and eventually became one of the screen's top cowboy stars, making 127 western films during his career. Benigni is also a well appreciated improvisatory poet (poesia estemporanea is a form of art popularly followed and practiced in Tuscany), and is appreciated for his recitations of Dante's Divina Commedia by memory. He appeared in minor roles until 1930 when he was cast as the star in a western movie titled Billy the Kid directed by King Vidor. He also starred in the first of Jarmusch's series of short films Coffee and Cigarettes (1986). His good looks and powerful physique saw him portrayed on Wheaties cereal boxes and in 1927, brought an offer for motion picture screen tests that resulted in a long and successful career in Hollywood.

In Down By Law (1986) he plays Bob, the innocent abroad, convicted for murder, whose irrepressible good humour and optimism help him escape and find love (also starring Braschi as his beloved.) In Night on Earth (1991) he plays a cabby in Rome, causing his passenger, a priest, great discomfort by confessing his revolting sexual experiences. In that year's Rose Bowl, he scored two of his teams three touchdowns in an upset win over the favored Washington Huskies. Benigni has starred in two films by American Director Jim Jarmusch. Playing the halfback position on his university's Crimson Tide football team, Brown helped his team to become the 1926 NCAA Division I-A national football champions. Benigni's wife, Nicoletta Braschi, has starred with him in most of the films he directed. Born and raised in Dothan, Alabama, Brown was a star of the high school football team, earning a football scholarship to the University of Alabama. With the very popular comic actor Massimo Troisi, he played in Non ci resta che piangere (nothing left for us, but crying), a fable in which the protagonists are suddenly thrown back in time up to 15th century, just a little before 1492, so they start looking for Columbus in order to stop him before discovering the Americas, but obviously they are not able to reach him. Johnny Mack Brown (September 1, 1904 – November 14, 1974) was an All-American college football player and successful film actor.

Benigni also directed The Monster (Il Mostro), Il piccolo diavolo (with Walter Matthau) and Johnny Stecchino. Benigni's father had spent two years in a concentration camp in Bergen-Belsen, and La Vita è bella is based in part on his father's experiences; the film was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Actor (Benigni directed himself). Benigni is probably best known for his tragicomedy Life Is Beautiful (La Vita è bella), filmed in Cortona, about a man who tries to protect his son during his internment at a Nazi concentration camp, by telling him that the Holocaust is an elaborate game and he must adhere very carefully to the rules to win. He was born in Misericordia, Tuscany, Italy.

Roberto Benigni (born October 27, 1952) is an Italian film and television actor and director.