Roberto Benigni Net Worth

Roberto Benigni's Quotes

• [on winning the Best Actor Academy Award for Het leven is mooi (1997) after already accepting the Best Foreign Language Film award as its director] "Thank you. This is a terrible mistake, because I used up all my English!"
• Charlie Chaplin used his ass better than any other actor. In all his films his ass is practically the protagonist. For a comic, the ass has incredible importance.
• [said backstage at the Oscars after he won the Best Actor category] "I'm so happy that every organ in my body is moving in a very bad way."
• On Stanley Kubrick: Stanley Kubrick is one of the geniuses of this century.
• The first movie I saw - and I don't know if it influenced me - was Ben Hur. We watched it outside in a corn field, and it ran backwards. So the first movie I ever saw was Ben Hur, backwards.

Interesting Facts about Roberto Benigni

1. After his movie Het leven is mooi (1997) received seven Academy Award nominations, he met the Italian President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro and said, after shaking his hand: "Now I have the Oscar in my hand!".
2. When the Ulivo party won the parliamentary elections, Benigni jumped on the stage and kissed Walter Veltroni, one of the party's candidates.
3. His father Luigi Benigni (1918-2004), who worked as a farmer, carpenter and bricklayer, was a prisoner in the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen between 1943 and 1945. Roberto used his stories as the basis for his film Het leven is mooi (1997). However, unlike Roberto's character in the film, Roberto's father was not of Jewish heritage.
4. His mother Isolina Papini (1918-2004) worked as a fabric inspector.
5. Sister: Bruna Benigni (textile worker), born 1945.
6. Sister: Albertina Benigni (flower shop owner), born 1947.
7. Sister: Anna Benigni (teacher's aide), born 1948.
8. Attended a seminary in Florence, planning to become a priest.
9. Left the seminary after two-thirds of Florence had been flooded by the Arno River (4 November 1966).
10. Graduated from Instituto Tecnico Commericale Datini di Prato.
11. He and Laurence Olivier are the only two actors to have directed themselves in Oscar winning performances.
12. The first actor to win a Best Actor Oscar for a non-English speaking role.
13. He is the sixth actor in history to win the Oscar for Best Actor in a comedy after Clark Gable in Het gebeurde op 'n avond (1934), James Stewart in De bronzen godin (1940), Lee Marvin in Cat Ballou (1965), Richard Dreyfuss in The Goodbye Girl (1977) and Jack Nicholson in As Good as It Gets (1997).
14. Benigni met wife Nicoletta Braschi on the set of Tu mi turbi (1983).
15. The first actor to win a Worst Actor Razzie for a non-English speaking role.
16. He joins Sylvester Stallone, Prince, Kevin Costner, William Shatner, and Tom Green as being the only actors to direct themselves in performances that would "win" them a Razzie Award for Worst Actor.
17. When he "won" the 2003 Razzie Award for Worst Actor in Pinocchio (2002), Razzies.com declared his win "By a Nose!", as he'd just barely beaten fellow nominee Steven Seagal in the film Half Past Dead (2002) by a mere few votes.
18. Federico Fellini considered him a genius
19. Member of the jury at the Berlin International Film Festival 1990
20. Has his look-alike puppet in the French show Les Guignols de l'info (1988).