cinema2020

Abatantuono, Diego

Film actor, born in Milan on 20 May 1955. A multifaceted talent whose film career was characterized initially by commercial films, he later became a protagonist of Italian cinema thanks also to the collaboration with some directors such as Gabriele Salvatores, Pupi Avati, Giuseppe Bertolucci, Luigi Comencini, Daniele Luchetti. He won two silver ribbons, in 1987 for Avati's Christmas gift (1986) and in 1993 for Salvatores' Puerto Escondido (1992).

His acting career began alongside the comic group of Gatti di Vicolo Miracoli in the film Arrivano i cats (1980) by Carlo Vanzina. This was followed by Fico d'India (1980) by Steno and I fichissimi (1981) by Vanzina, his first starring film in which he played for the first time the amusing role of the terrunciello, a character for whom he invented a dialect that entered to be part of the history of the cassette film, in which Eccezzziunale must be remembered… truly (1982) again directed by Vanzina. From 1983 he abandoned commercial cinema to devote himself to theater and in 1984 he played Sganarello in Don Giovanni di Molière, directed by Mario Morini. It was only in 1986 that, with the Christmas gift, he began to try his hand at more demanding subjects, showing remarkable talent. After Comencini's Un boy from Calabria (1987), the following year he worked with G. Bertolucci in Strana la vita and I cammelli. Starting in 1989, first with Marrakech Express and the following year with Turné, the collaboration with G. Salvatores began, which then entrusted him with the role of pacifist soldier Nicola Lorusso, pretended gruff, ironic and nostalgic, in the Mediterranean (Oscar for best foreign film in 1992), that of a Milanese banker who escapes to Mexico in Puerto Escondido and again, in 1996, that of the protagonist of a video game in Nirvana. The relationship of mutual exchange with Salvatores led him to outline characters in which the reflection on the crisis of a generation emerges, always with an ironic and disenchanted cut. Subsequently in Unfair Competition (2001),

BIBLIOGRAPHY

M. Giusti, Diego's parable , in "The five-six patalogue", 1983; G. Stornelli, Diego Abatantuono , Rome 1998.