Talented and dark icon of cinema, Monica Bellucci has kept a good place in the hearts of the French for years. The international star, now a mother of two daughters, has always been lucid about the essential place of her appearance in her career and now aspires to roles that no longer simply revolve around that.
Date and place of birth : 09/30/1964 in Italy (58 years old)Astrological sign : LibraFamily status : In a relationship with Tim BurtonProfessions : Actress, modelNumber of children : 2Children : Deva and Léonie Cassel September 12, 2004 May 21, 2010Parent(s) of the child(ren) : Vincent Cassel and Monica BellucciInstagram : @monicabellucciofficiel?hl=frFor more than thirty years, Monica Bellucci has become an essential reference for French cinema, but also for fashion. The Italian actress is a true international icon, often highlighted for her talent as an actress and for her fiery beauty.

Portrait of an essential artist with a singular accent who has charmed the entire industry.
A lonely childhoodIn addition to her native language, the star born on September 30, 1964 in Città di Castello (Umbria, Italy) is fluent in French and English, which has contributed to the development of her international career. Monica Bellucci has also acted in Persian, Aramaic, Serbian films…

My father was not often there.
Daughter of Pasquale Bellucci and Brunella Briganti, Monica Bellucci grew up in Selci-Lama (Italy), the interpreter of Cleopatra in Asterix and Obélix by Alain Chabat, was a rather lonely only child, raised by a stay-at-home mother and a father, manager of a road transport company.

In 2019, Monica Bellucci confided in Madame Figaro about her childhood: “My father was not often there, but he gave me keys that protected me. He said to me: ‘You, the women , you have a sense of mammismo – in Italian, it’s that natural inclination to mother. And us men, look out, we’re taking advantage of that’.”
Growing up, she first went to law school before taking up acting. In order to pay for her studies and launch her career, the future actress did modeling and became a photo model from the age of 16. In 1987, she made her first shoots before joining Milan two years later, within the Elite agency. In the 1980s, Dolce & Gabbana spotted her and chose her as its muse.

A film career at 18One thing leading to another and especially from parade to parade, Monica Bellucci lost interest in modeling and approached comedy by taking theater lessons. In 1990, she played in the Italian TV movie Vita coi figli where she plays the role of a young girl who falls in love with a man and father older than her.
The following year, the Italian got her first role in Francesco Laudadio’s drama La Riffa . Quickly, the roles become bigger, bigger and more complex. His notoriety then goes beyond the Italian borders.
Subscribe to cult filmsIn 1996, she played Lisa in L’Appartement and met the man who would become the father of her two children, Vincent Cassel. Notable films she starred in in 2002 include Gaspar Noé’s Irréversible and the cult comedy Asterix and Obelix: Mission Cleopatra . In July 2023, the adventures of the irreducible Gauls are also back in the cinema in a remastered version and for 5 euros instead.
Known in France but also in Hollywood, the star also appeared in two parts of the Matrix saga : Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions . She also became the first James Bond girl in her fifties alongside Daniel Craig in 007 Specter (2015).
Hailed by the cinema communitySeveral times she was rewarded for her roles and was honored with the seventh art. In 2021, the actress won a David Speciale for her entire career at the 66th David di Donatello ceremony just like the previous year when she received an honorary Magritte.
In 2003 and 2017, Monica Bellucci was the opening and closing ceremony mistress of the Cannes Film Festival. During this second time, she had also marked the spirits by kissing actor Alex Lutz full on the mouth, as part of a sketch. In this scene, the genres are reversed and take up the dynamics of many movie kisses during which the man imposes himself on the woman. Here, it is Monica Bellucci who leads the dance by force.
We must not forget that a woman also knows how to defend herself when she can.
The same year and on the other side of the globe, the Academy of Oscars named her a permanent member representing Italy and offered her a seat among the grand jury of voters responsible for awarding the Oscars.
A hypersexualized actressMonica Bellucci is a woman who, like many actresses, has been objectified and over-sexualized throughout her career. She has been elected several times “most beautiful woman in the world” or “sexiest woman in the world” by the press.
In 2016, she was on the cover of Paris Match and explained that she had always been judged solely because of her appearance: “I have been watched a lot in my life, but I’m not sure, in the end, that I was really seen.”
In 2022, during an interview with Gala , the actress confided that she aspired to serenity in her life after having often had the feeling of being “just a trophy for others” and in particular for men.
Monica Bellucci and her support for Roman PolanskiMonica Bellucci has an ambivalent position on the feminist cause in cinema. She welcomed the release of speech that followed #MeToo and the Weinstein case, the American producer convicted of several rapes and sexual assaults, and admitted to being lucky in the fact that she had never suffered sexual violence. “I was lucky, life spared me, but there are terrible situations, it can happen to everyone. We must not lock the woman into a status of victim which would bring her back, it does not must not forget that a woman also knows how to defend herself when she can”, she declared in Madame Figaro in 2019.
However, in 2009, Monica Bellucci was one of the signatories of an appeal to the Swiss authorities demanding the release of the director Roman Polanski, detained in the border country pending his extradition to the United States while he is targeted by child crime charges. Many international personalities of the 7th art such as Claude Lelouch, Pedro Almodovar or Tonie Marshall had also signed the platform.
Almost ten years earlier, the Italian artist had made a commitment to the Women’s Words Association by becoming godmother of the organization which organizes single-sex speeches between women who find the need for it. According to her, “it is normal and fundamental that all those who have a voice help those who do not have it, (…) those who do not have the right to live their role as mothers with dignity, (…) who are kept in ancestral traditions, without knowing the freedom of choice”, she related in Gala .
The funds from her photo book Monica Bellucci (Éd. La Martinière) were also donated to the association which was then building “citizen houses”, that is to say emergency homes to accommodate women in a situation of great precariousness.
Old age and its discovery of new rolesAt over 60, Monica Bellucci is often asked about her relationship to time and old age. In 2022, in the program Quelle Époque presented by Léa Salamé, Monica Belluci declared: “I find the passage of time great. It’s just another vision of life but which takes nothing away from the passion and the desire to live.”
In 2017, she confided to Franceinfo that aging had allowed her to play different roles: “Me, I have always experienced my physical appearance as a gift. I did not fight against it. (…) I think that the time that pass gives me another way to exist on screen.”
In August 2023, she is starring in the action film Mafia Mamma and next September in BeetleJuice 2 , a sequel to the cult feature film directed by Tim Burton.
His need to be with his daughtersMonica Bellucci became a mother in 2004 and 2010 respectively of Deva and Léonie, born of her union with Vincent Cassel.
In 2017, during the Cannes Film Festival, she spoke of her need to be with her children, far from the cinema: “There are these actresses who come back three months after giving birth. I am not like that. weight, I breastfeed for a long time, I take all the time I need to experience motherhood. I want my children to see me as a mother, and not as an actress.
In Madame Figaro , she praised the role of parents in the home: “It’s very important work for society. And this work is not valued.” Monica Bellucci maintained that she had the chance to “succeed in getting pregnant very late [39 ans et 45 ans, ndlr ]: “I had had time to shoot a lot before, I could allow myself to slow down to take care of my girls.”
In September 2022, she explained to Gala already wanting to be a grandmother, with a touch of humor: “If it were up to me, I would even love it now. But for my daughter [Deva, ndlr ] , I hopefully she’ll wait a bit.”
I take all the time I need to experience motherhood.
In a relationship with Tim BurtonIn 1990, when she was 20, Monica Bellucci got married for a few months to Italian photographer Claudio Carlos Basso. Nine years later she married in Monte-Carlo with the French actor and father of her two daughters, Vincent Cassel. In August 2013, they announced their divorce. In the meantime, she formalizes with the contemporary artist and sculptor Nicolas Lefebvre before separating from him in 2019.
Today, Monica Bellucci is in a relationship with director Tim Burton and made her relationship official on June 26, 2023 in Elle magazine . A few days before, Paris Match had published photos of the two celebrities standing arm in arm in Paris. They would have had a “love at first sight” in October 2022 in Lyon, during the Lumière Film Festival. The filmmaker had received a prize from the hands of the actress.

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