Guido Alberti(1909-1996)

This is 1962. Filmmaker Guido Anselmi is going through an artistic crisis. He does not think he will be able to make the film he has signed for. All he wants is to retreat into a world of his own, far from the public eye. All he wants is peace and what he gets is ... Pace, his producer, who keeps on pressurizing him into starting the shooting. Everybody will have recognized the plot of Federico Fellini's masterpiece 8½ (1963). Marcello Mastroianni was Guido, Fellini's alter ego, already a star at the time, but nobody knew Pace, wonderfully interpreted by a fifty-three-year-old beginner, then starting a second life as a movie actor, Guido Alberti. Despite a rather ordinary physical appearance, the newcomer immediately made a name for himself thanks to his impressive presence and for thirty years (he made his last film at the age of eighty-three), the more and more massive and portly thespian proved a scene stealer, even in the tiniest roles. He can be seen in a wide range of films, whether Italian, European or American and he is at his best when donning the cassock or the robe (from priest to bishop to cardinal to ... the Pope! in La fabuleuse aventure de Marco Polo (1965)) or when embodying authority figures (at times menacing) such as prison governor, police superintendent or prime minister. And he is unforgettable as the right-wing party leader in yet another masterpiece Main basse sur la ville (1963), directed by Francesco Rosi As a character actor, Guido Alberti was the indispensable kind. He worked before the cameras of the greatest, Fellini, Rosi, Luis García Berlanga, Mario Monicelli, Valerio Zurlini, Roman Polanski but he was not averse to more popular cinema, taking part for example in many a 'giallo'. He was also active on television. The son of industrialist Ugo Alberti, co-owner of the 'Strega Alberti Benevento' company, it looked as if Guido Alberti would never break from his preordained destiny. In 1957, He even became the board chairman of the firm. But Guido also had literary and artistic aptitudes. For instance, in 1947, he founded the famous literary prize 'Premio Strega', which is not common among industrialists, before finally opting for the acting career. Guido Alberti died in 1996, a few days before his eighty-seventh birthday, after a long life, in accordance with himself