INTERVIEWS•5 photos

Monica Bellucci finding herself in her 50s

‘I did my first pictures when I was 13. A friend of the family was a photographer and he said, “Can I have a picture of Monica?” And then when I was 16, another friend of my father, who was into fashion, came and said, “I would like to do fashion shoots with Monica.” So I did a fashion show in Florence and then in Milan, and actually while I was at school, I was doing fashion shows three times a year. And then I became professional when I finished high school at 18.’ Photographs of Bellucci as a teenager (‘I looked like a woman at 13’) show her with red lips, curled hair and a waistcoat that flops sideways to give a glimpse of her breast. What did your parents think about modelling? ‘Maybe because they were young they accepted it and understood.’ She says her mother, in particular, wanted something more for her daughter. ‘She wanted to push me away. Inside her was, “Oh my God, no, not the same life as me.”’ And so in her early 20s Bellucci lived in Paris, Milan and New York, where she worked in fashion after being signed by Elite Model Management, and partied with her new-found friends. ‘It was like my parents let me be free in a way that was almost incredible, almost maybe too much, but it was great.’ At 25, she married Claudio Carlos Basso, a photographer. The marriage lasted 18 months. ‘I haven’t seen him since.’ ‘Modelling came to me naturally, and I loved pictures. I loved the world of image. I didn’t do something I was forced into. When I was young, I had books by Helmut Newton, Bruce Weber; pictures were talking to me from an early age.’ In 1992, two years after Dino Risi was so entranced by an image of Bellucci that he cast her in his Italian TV film, Roman Coppola spotted her fiery sexuality in the Italian magazine Zoom and begged his father, the director Francis Ford Coppola, to offer her a part in his film Bram Stoker’s Dracula. She played one of Dracula’s brides. ‘It was just a moment, but I had to go to LA,’ she says. ‘I think my dream always was to be an actress, but I was coming from a place where cinema was so far away from me.’ Roman Coppola would not actually meet Bellucci in the flesh until some 25 years later, at the Golden Globe Awards, where Mozart in the Jungle, which he co-created, won an award. ‘He said, “Hey! You have to give me something because I am the one who discovered you.”’ But at 28 she was still just a wannabe, like thousands of models. She took acting classes to iron out her modelling ‘tics’ – ‘the way you walk, the way you talk, you lose that kind of natural way you need for cinema. There is an attitude in modelling.’ Her breakthrough came in 1996 with The Apartment, a moody French film noir about a romantic young executive who leaves his corporate life behind to search for his first love, played by Bellucci.
‘I did my first pictures when I was 13. A friend of the family was a photographer and he said, “Can I have a picture of Monica?” And then when I was 16, another friend of my father, who was into fashion, came and said, “I would like to do fashion shoots with Monica.” So I did a fashion show in Florence and then in Milan, and actually while I was at school, I was doing fashion shows three times a year. And then I became professional when I finished high school at 18.’ Photographs of Bellucci as a teenager (‘I looked like a woman at 13’) show her with red lips, curled hair and a waistcoat that flops sideways to give a glimpse of her breast. What did your parents think about modelling? ‘Maybe because they were young they accepted it and understood.’ She says her mother, in particular, wanted something more for her daughter. ‘She wanted to push me away. Inside her was, “Oh my God, no, not the same life as me.”’ And so in her early 20s Bellucci lived in Paris, Milan and New York, where she worked in fashion after being signed by Elite Model Management, and partied with her new-found friends. ‘It was like my parents let me be free in a way that was almost incredible, almost maybe too much, but it was great.’ At 25, she married Claudio Carlos Basso, a photographer. The marriage lasted 18 months. ‘I haven’t seen him since.’ ‘Modelling came to me naturally, and I loved pictures. I loved the world of image. I didn’t do something I was forced into. When I was young, I had books by Helmut Newton, Bruce Weber; pictures were talking to me from an early age.’ In 1992, two years after Dino Risi was so entranced by an image of Bellucci that he cast her in his Italian TV film, Roman Coppola spotted her fiery sexuality in the Italian magazine Zoom and begged his father, the director Francis Ford Coppola, to offer her a part in his film Bram Stoker’s Dracula. She played one of Dracula’s brides. ‘It was just a moment, but I had to go to LA,’ she says. ‘I think my dream always was to be an actress, but I was coming from a place where cinema was so far away from me.’ Roman Coppola would not actually meet Bellucci in the flesh until some 25 years later, at the Golden Globe Awards, where Mozart in the Jungle, which he co-created, won an award. ‘He said, “Hey! You have to give me something because I am the one who discovered you.”’ But at 28 she was still just a wannabe, like thousands of models. She took acting classes to iron out her modelling ‘tics’ – ‘the way you walk, the way you talk, you lose that kind of natural way you need for cinema. There is an attitude in modelling.’ Her breakthrough came in 1996 with The Apartment, a moody French film noir about a romantic young executive who leaves his corporate life behind to search for his first love, played by Bellucci.

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Comments (1)

AMIR N2018-07-11

Hello lady monica bellucci I saw your Irreversible film, and I was saddened because you in film were hurt I love you so much and I cannot endurance the movies you will hurting Also, I've seen you in Malena's film, and I was saddened because you in film were hurt You are my very beautiful and favorite actor, please, in videos that you are harassed Thanks & Regards Amir N IRAN

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