- Macha Meril, Une femme mariée, France, 1964. With his wife, Anna Karina, fleeing to an Italian film in Greece, Jean-Luc Godard first thought of Sandrelli for her second French film. She had shot Les Vierges for Godard’s (then)pal, Jean-Pierre Mocky in 1961. This time, however, she was pregnant… with future actress Amanda Sandrelli.
- Catherine Deneuve, Tristana, France-Italy-Spain, 1969. Luis Bunuel first planned it for Sylvia Pina and Ernesto Alonso, the Mexican actor (63 roles) and producer (of a staggering 157 series!). Then, Fernando Rey (“excellent in Viridiana”) and Stefania in Spain but the 1961 Viridiana scandal killed that idea off. And not even Bunuel could get it going again until 1969. “By an ordinary director, “or even by a great director with no sympathy for the material, “This story could have been embarrassingly melodramatic,” noted Chicago critic Roger Ebert,“I was about to say …disgusting- but, of course, it is disgusting, and that was Buñuel’s purpose… That’s why his films work; because they’re himself, they’re personal. Buñuel is in control of every shot and every scene, and he is having at our subconscious like a surgeon.”
- Stefania Sandrelli, The Godfather, 1971.
- Rosemarie Lindt, Salon Kitty, Italy, 1976. Paradoxically, the star of the 1984 Tinto Brass scandal, La chiave/The Key, rejected her first Brass offer. ‘I felt his script was self-indulgent, complacent and too close in its historical references to Fascism. Then, I saw the film and liked it a lot. Like his Caligula… molto experimento.”
- Serena Grandii, Miranda, Italy, 1985.
She had thought long about making La chiave/The Key, for Tinto Brass and decided to take “a huge risk.” But just the once, apparently. “No, she was going to do it,” Tinto told me in Paris. “Everyone started referring to it as The Key II. It wasn’t. If I’d wanted that, I’d have done it. To stop the confusion, I changed actresses. Stefania understood.” Then again, s she’d only do it for 8000m lire. Ciao bella!
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 5