Monica Vitti (born Maria Luisa Ceciarelli) is an Italian actress best known for her starring roles in films directed by Michelangelo Antonioni during the early 1960s. After working with Antonioni, Vitti changed focus and began making comedies, working with director Mario Monicelli on many films. She has appeared with Marcello Mastroianni, Richard Harris, Terence Stamp, Michael Caine, and Dirk Bogarde. Vitti won five David di Donatello Awards for Best Actress, seven Italian Golden Globes for Best Actress, the Career Golden Globe, and the Venice Film Festival Career Golden Lion Award.
In 1957 she joined Michelangelo Antonioni's Teatro Nuovo di Milano and dubbed the voice of Dorian Gray in the director's Il Grido (The Cry, 1957). She played a leading role in Antonioni's internationally praised film L'avventura (1960), as a detached and cool protagonist drifting into a relationship with the lover of her missing girlfriend. Giving a screen presence which has been described as "stunning", she is also credited with helping Antonioni raise money for the production and sticking with him through daunting location shooting. L'avventura made Vitti an international star. Her image later appeared on an Italian postage stamp commemorating the film. According to The New York Times, Vitti's "air of disenchantment perfectly conveys the unreal aura of her heroines."
Vitti received critical praise for starring roles in the Antonioni film La Notte (Night, 1961), with Jeanne Moreau and Marcello Mastroianni. Vitti starred in a TV movie Le notti bianche (1962) then did a third with Antonioni, L'Eclisse (1962) with Alain Delon.
Vitti was one of many stars in an anthology movie, Three Fables of Love (1962). She had a cameo in Sweet and Sour (1963) and played the lead in a comedy for Roger Vadim, Nutty, Naughty Chateau (1963). Vitti was then in another anthology film High Infidelity (1964) and made a fourth with Antonioni, Il Deserto Rosso (Red Desert, 1964), with Richard Harris. The director said Vitti "certainly inspires me, because I like to watch and direct her, but the parts I give her are a long way from her own character."
After Vitti's relationship with Antonioni ended, the two did not work together again until Il mistero di Oberwald (1980).
Vitti's first English language film was Modesty Blaise (1966), a mod James Bond spy spoof in which she performed in July 1965. Co starring Terence Stamp and Dirk Bogarde, directed by Joseph Losey, it had only mixed success and received harsh critical reviews.
She performed in the anthology movie The Queens (1966), a television series Les fables de La Fontaine (1966), Kill Me Quick, I'm Cold (1967) with Jean Sorel, and I Married You for Fun (1967).
Vitti appeared in On My Way to the Crusades, I Met a Girl Who... (1967) with Tony Curtis, The Girl with a Pistol (1968) with Stanley Baker, The Bitch Wants Blood (1969) with Maurice Ronet, and Help Me, My Love (1969) with Alberto Sordi.
