Toni Servillo

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Toni Servillo (2014)

Marco Antonio "Toni" Servillo (born January 25, 1959 in Afragola ) is an Italian actor and theater director . The autodidact began his career in the Neapolitan theater in the 1970s and became known to a wide audience as a film actor from the 1990s. For his minimalist representations, which evoked comparisons to Buster Keaton , he has received multiple awards in his home country and in Europe.

Life

Training and theater work

Toni Servillo was born in the province of Naples in 1959 . In the 1960s, he and his family moved to Caserta . Fascinated by acting from childhood, Servillo attended boarding school, but graduated from a state school. The autodidact, who never attended drama school, appeared on the theater stage for the first time in Bertolt Brecht's Die Gesichte der Simone Machard in the 1970s and founded the avant-garde theater Teatro Studio in Caserta in 1977 . In this he worked as a director and actor on plays such as Propaganda (1979), Norma (1982) or Geliebter Spinner (1983), in which he went on tour in Italy and other European countries. For the self-written one-act act Guernica , in which he took over the direction and played the leading role, Servillo won the Premio Gennaro Vitiello .

From 1986 Servillo joined the better known Neapolitan free theater group Falso Movimento by Mario Martone . Under Martone he played in the piece Ritorno ad Alphaville and was responsible for the work E ... based on texts by Eduardo De Filippo . The oeuvre of the Italian actor and author inspired Servillo for further theater productions in the following years. These include Ha da passà a nuttata (1989) and the production Sabato, domenica e lunedì (2002), which was awarded the Premio Gassman and which he staged with Teatri Uniti, co-founded in 1987 . In addition to traditional subjects from the Neapolitan theater, Servillo also ventured into such well-known foreign authors as Molière ( Der Menschenfeind , 1995; Tartuffe , 2000) or Marivaux ( Les Fausses confidences , 1998). With Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro (2000), Richard Strauss ' Ariadne auf Naxos (2003) or Ludwig van Beethoven's Fidelio (2005), he also staged classical operas on Italian and Portuguese stages.

Start of the film career

Parallel to his work at the theater, Servillo made his debut as a film actor in the early 1990s under the direction of his companion Mario Martone. At the side of Carlo Cecchi and Anna Bonaiuto , he appeared in the award-winning drama Morte di un matematico napoletano in 1992 , which was followed by other roles in Martone's films Rasoi (1993) and Teatro di guerra (1998). His breakthrough as a film actor in Italy paved the way for him to work with the young auteur filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino , with whom he first worked on L'uomo in più in 2001 . In the drama, which was inspired by the biographies of the musician Franco Califano and the soccer player Agostino Di Bartolomei , Servillo slipped into the role of a pair of brothers with Andrea Renzi , whose successful careers were followed by economic and social collapse in the 1980s. For the part of the singer Tony Pisapia, who fled into drug addiction and a relationship with an underage girl, the adventurous actor won the most important Italian film awards, the David di Donatello and the Nastro d'Argento des Sindacato Nazionale Giornalisti Cinematografici Italiani for the first time , nominated.

Servillo was able to build on this success three years later with the lead role in Sorrentino's Le conseguenze dell'amore , which was featured in the 2004 competition at the 57th Cannes Film Festival . The character study, praised by German critics as subtle and elegant, about a reclusive money launderer who worked for years in a hotel in Italian-speaking Switzerland, was awarded the David di Donatello as the best Italian film of the year in 2005. Servillo also received high praise from the critics, who was awarded the Italian film prize and the Nastro d'Argento for his “masterful minimalism” , which reminded some of Buster Keaton .

International breakthrough with "Gomorrah", "Il Divo" and "La Grande Bellezza"

Servillo in 2008

The actor celebrated his greatest success to date in 2008. At the 61st Cannes Film Festival , he starred in two different films in the competition for the Palme d' Or. Directed by Matteo Garrone , Servillo acted in the bestselling film Gomorrha - Reise in die Reich der Camorra as a malicious Campanian garbage manager, for which the German Tagesspiegel highly praised him as a minimalist comedian in the style of Buster Keaton. In Paolo Sorrentino's political satire Il Divo, the actor mimed the seven-time Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti , who is also said to have ties to the Mafia, like a mask and with angular movements . The Italian was then considered a favorite for the actor's award, but lost out to Benicio del Toro ( Revolución and Guerrilla ), who was honored as Che Guevara for his performance . Months later, Servillo received the European Film Award for Best Actor for both Gomorrah and Il Divo and was able to prevail against such well-known colleagues as James McAvoy ( apology ) or Mads Mikkelsen ( Days of Anger ). Also in 2008, he was honored with his second David di Donatello for the leading role of the taciturn detective commissioner in Andrea Molaioli's La ragazza del lago , the film adaptation of a novel by Karin Fossum . A year later he was again awarded the David di Donatello and the Nastro d'Argento for his performance in Il Divo .

Another collaboration with Sorrentino took place with La Grande Bellezza - The Great Beauty (2013), which revolves around the excesses, decadence and vain chatter of upscale Roman society. In the feature film, hailed by critics as a refined homage to Fellini's The Sweet Life , Servillo slipped into the role of the writer Jep Gambardella, who, with increasing age, seems to be caught in an endless loop of luxury and emptiness. La Grande Bellezza was premiered in 2013 at the 66th Cannes International Film Festival and one year later won the Oscar and Golden Globe Awards for Best Foreign Language Film . In 2013 the film won four European Film Awards, including the Actor Award for Servillo. This makes him the only actor alongside the French Daniel Auteuil to have been honored twice by the European Film Academy .

In 2018, the feature film Loro - Die Verführten followed another collaboration with Sorrentino. Servillo received his tenth nomination for the Nastro d'Argento for his portrayal of the Italian ex-prime minister and media entrepreneur Silvio Berlusconi . German critics praised the actor for his “charm” or as a “quick-change artist”, “made up like a mask under an absurdly dark hair helmet”.

Toni Servillo has been married to Manuela La Manna since 1990. The marriage resulted in two sons (born in 1996 and 2003). His brother is the singer Peppe Servillo , with whom he appeared in Fabrizio Bentivoglio's 2007 film Lascia perdere, Johnny! stood in front of the camera.

Filmography (selection)

  • 1992: Morte di un matematico napoletano
  • 1993: Rasoi
  • 1997: I vesuviani
  • 1998: Teatro di guerra
  • 2001: L'uomo in più
  • 2001: Luna rossa
  • 2004: Le conseguenze dell'amore
  • 2004: Notte senza fine
  • 2005: Sabato, domenica e lunedì (TV)
  • 2007: La ragazza del lago
  • 2007: Lascia perdere, Johnny!
  • 2008: Gomorrah - Journey into the realm of the Camorra (Gomorrah)
  • 2008: Il Divo
  • 2010: Gorbaciof
  • 2010: The flag of freedom (Noi credevamo)
  • 2010: A Quiet Life - The Mafia Doesn't Forget (Una vita tranquilla)
  • 2010: Un balcon sur la mer
  • 2011: Il gioiellino
  • 2012: È stato il figlio
  • 2012: Bella addormentata
  • 2013: Viva la libertà
  • 2013: La Grande Bellezza - The great beauty (La grande bellezza)
  • 2013: Racconti d'amore
  • 2014: Le voci di dentro (TV)
  • 2016: Le confessioni
  • 2017: Let yourself go (Lasciati andare)
  • 2017: The Fog Man (La ragazza nella nebbia)
  • 2018: Loro - The Seduced (Loro)

Awards (selection)

Angers European First Film Festival

  • 2002: Jean Carmet Prize for L'uomo in più

David di Donatello

  • 2002: nominated as Best Actor for L'uomo in più
  • 2005: Best leading actor for Le conseguenze dell'amore
  • 2008: Best Actor for La ragazza del lago
  • 2009: Best Actor for Il Divo
  • 2013: nominated as Best Actor for Viva la libertà
  • 2014: Best Actor for La Grande Bellezza
  • 2017: nominated as Best Actor for Le confessioni

European film award

  • 2005 : nominated for the audience award as best actor for Le conseguenze dell'amore
  • 2008 : Best Actor for Gomorrah - Journey into the Realm of Camorra and Il Divo
  • 2013 : Best Actor for La Grande Bellezza - The Great Beauty

Sindacato Nazionale Giornalisti Cinematografici Italiani

  • 2002: nominated for the Nastro d'Argento as best leading actor for L'uomo in più
  • 2005: Nastro d'Argento as Best Actor for Le conseguenze dell'amore
  • 2009: Nastro d'Argento as Best Actor for Il Divo
  • 2011: nominated for the Nastro d'Argento as Best Actor for A Quiet Life and Il gioiellino
  • 2013: Special prize for Bella addormentata , La Grande Bellezza - The great beauty and Viva la libertà
  • 2017: nominated for the Nastro d'Argento as Best Actor for Let Go
  • 2017: nominated for the Nastro d'Argento as best leading actor for Loro - Die Verführten

Venice International Film Festival

  • 2007: Pasinetti Prize for Best Actor for La ragazza del lago

Locarno International Film Festival

  • 2009: Excellence Award for his life's work

Web links

Commons : Toni Servillo  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. http://www.toniservillo.it/?page_id=28
  2. a b cf. Biography at movieplayer.it (Italian; accessed December 6, 2008)
  3. a b cf. Biography at mymovies.it (Italian; accessed December 6, 2008)
  4. a b c cf. Biography ( Memento of the original from July 1, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at cittacentoscale.it (Italian; accessed December 6, 2008) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.cittacentoscale.it
  5. cf. Portrait  ( page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at arte.tv, June 29, 2006 (accessed December 6, 2008)@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.arte.tv  
  6. a b cf. Koppold, Rupert: Some wines are corked . In: Stuttgarter Zeitung , May 15, 2004, p. 35
  7. cf. Daniel Kothenschulte : Homage to a typewriter . In: Frankfurter Rundschau , May 14, 2004, p. 17
  8. cf. Becker, Peter von: Play yourself the song of death . In: Der Tagesspiegel, November 17, 2008, edition 20088, p. 25
  9. cf. Beier, Lars-Olav: Pipe-free for everyone! at Spiegel Online , May 23, 2008 (accessed December 6, 2008)
  10. cf. Palme d'or: les paris sont ouverts . In: Le Matin, May 24, 2008, p. 34
  11. ^ Lederle, Josef: La Grande Bellezza . In. film-dienst 15/2013 (accessed via Munzinger Online ).
  12. Bahl, Silvia: Loro - The seduced . In: filmdienst.de (accessed on November 16, 2018).
  13. Scheer, Ursula: He eats sheep without punishment . In: faz.net, November 14, 2018 (accessed November 16, 2018).
  14. ^ Toni Servillo . In: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 09/2015 from February 24, 2015 (accessed via Munzinger Online ).
  15. ^ Excellence Award from Locarno to Toni Servillo ( Memento from April 12, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), Kleine Zeitung , April 9, 2009