Franca Bettoia

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Franca Bettoia, 1964

Franca Bettoia (born May 14, 1936 in Rome ) is an Italian actress .

Life

Born into a respected Roman family, Bettoja attended art high school and then studied classical dance at the "Teatro dell'Opera", taking on minor roles in two films in her free time, including her feature film debut in 1955 in Siro Marcellini's Un palco all'opera . As a promising talent in the Italian cinema scene, Bettoja was able to succeed in successful and reasonably demanding (and also in French) films for a number of years: Two years after her debut, she starred in the Italian-Spanish co-production The Son of Sheik alongside Ricardo Montalbán , Carmen Sevilla and Gino Cervi . Through the director Pietro Germi , she got the opportunity to play the lead role of an extremely sensitive and fragile young woman in his L'uomo di paglia , which led to her breakthrough; again two years later she played alongside Macha Méril in the Italian-French co-production La main chaude . In the same year she was seen alongside Anita Ekberg in the war film Hell on the Yellow River . In 1961, she starred alongside Alan Ladd in Terence Young's sandal film The Lost Legion . With her sweet girl in Alfredo Giannetti's Giorno per giorno disperatamente in 1961, her star began to drown in the mass of pseudo-mythological material and adventure films produced in the 1960s. In 1964 she starred alongside Vincent Price in the first film adaptation of Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend , which later became much more successful as The Omega Man and I Am Legend . She then played Princess Samoa in two adventure films based on the character Sandokan by Emilio Salgari . In the Italian comedy film Il fischio al naso , published in 1967, she played the lover of lead actor Ugo Tognazzi , who also worked as a director and film producer on the film . In the same year, Tognazzi gave birth to their first child, Gianmarco. They only married in 1972, after the birth of their daughter Maria Sole, and the marriage lasted until Tognazzi's death in 1990. During their marriage, Bettoia only made one film, Don't Touch the White Woman , in which her husband was also involved. Her last film appearance so far was in 1993 in the action film Teste rasate , in which her son Gianmarco Tognazzi played the leading role.

Filmography (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Enrico Lancia: Article Franca Bettoja , in: Enrico Lancia, Roberto Poppi: Dizionario del cinema italiano. Le attrici. Rome 2003, p. 35
personal data
SURNAME Bettoia, Franca
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bettoja, Franca
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian actress
DATE OF BIRTH May 14, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Rome