Giulietta Masina

Giulietta Masina played the clown in La Strada and Nights of Cabiria and was compared to Chaplin by people who did not usually reach for that comparison. She was studying literature in Rome and acting in a university company when she was cast in a radio serial written by Federico Fellini; they met over it and married in 1943, and stayed married until they died five months apart fifty years later. She miscarried and then lost an infant son, and had no other children. Her face did the work: enormous eyes, abrupt changes of expression, comedy that turns without warning into something unbearable. Gelsomina in La Strada is a simple girl sold to a travelling strongman who destroys her; Cabiria is a Roman prostitute robbed by every man she trusts, whose last shot - looking directly into the camera, smiling through tears - is one of the most discussed endings in cinema. She won at Cannes for Cabiria. She acted for other directors rarely and said she did not need to. Nights of Cabiria won the foreign-language Academy Award in 1957 and became the musical Sweet Charity. She was best actress at Cannes for it. Juliet of the Spirits was written for her and is partly about their marriage, which she is said to have found difficult to watch. She presented a radio advice programme for years and answered the letters herself. When Fellini received his honorary Oscar in 1993 he asked her from the stage to stop crying. He died five months later on their fiftieth wedding anniversary, and she died the following March.

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