Monica Vitti /

Monica Vitti (born 3 November 1931) is an Italian actress most widely noted for her frosty expressiveness and starring roles during the early 1960s in films directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, her lover at that time. Born Maria Luisa Ceciarelli in Rome, she acted in amateur productions as a teenager, then trained as an actor at Rome's National Academy of Dramatic Arts (graduating in 1953) and at Pittman's College, where she played a teen in a charity performance of Dario Niccodemi's La nemica. She toured Germany with an Italian acting troupe and her first stage appearance in Rome was for a production of Niccolò Machiavelli's La Mandragola. Vitti in L'avventura (1960) In Red Desert (1964) In Polvere di stelle (1973) Vitti's first film role was in Ettore Scola's Ridere Ridere Ridere (1954) but her first widely noted performance was at the age of 26 in Mario Amendola's Le dritte (1958). In 1957 she joined Michelangelo Antonioni's Teatro Nuovo di Milano and later played a leading role in his internationally praised and award winning film L'avventura (1960) as a detached and cool protagonist drifting into a relationship with the lover of her missing girlfriend. Giving a screen presence which has been described as "stunning" she is also credited with helping Antonioni raise money for the production and sticking with him through daunting location shooting. L'avventura made Vitti an international star and one of Italy's most famous actresses of the 20th century. Her image later appeared on an Italian postage stamp commemorating the film. Vitti received critical praise for starring roles in the Antonioni films La Notte (Night, 1961), L'Eclisse (Eclipse, 1962) and Red Desert (Red Desert, 1964), which are often cited with L'avventura as a series. After she and Antonioni's relationship ended, they did not work together again until Il mistero di Oberwald (1980). Vitti's made only two English language films. The first was Modesty Blaise (1966), a mod James Bond spy spoof with Terence Stamp and Dirk Bogarde which had only mixed success and received harsh critical reviews. The other English film was Michael Ritchie's An Almost Perfect Affair (1979) with Keith Carradine which takes place during the Cannes Film Festival.