Toni Servillo, one of Italy’s most prolific and respected performers, won the best actor award at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday for his role as a morally upright Italian president struggling to overcome his indecision and take a stance.
A Venice regular, Servillo has enjoyed a rich, decades-long collaboration with director Paolo Sorrentino, who often casts him in his films.
Saturday’s prize was awarded for his work in the Neapolitan director’s “La Grazia”, and in accepting the award Servillo thanked Sorrentino.
He was also one of many at the awards ceremony speaking out against the war in Gaza, calling Gaza “a land where human dignity is cruelly trampled on every day”.
In “La Grazia”, Servillo portrays a politician nearing the end of an illustrious career who wrestles with a moral dilemma after being asked to sign a bill that would legalise euthanasia, and to pardon two convicted murderers.
In a long career in theatre and film, Servillo’s expressive face has lent itself to everything from larger-than-life politicians — such as former prime ministers Giulio Andreotti or Silvio Berlusconi — to Sorrentino’s kindly father in the director’s autobiographical “The Hand of God”.
But he is probably best known outside of Italy for his tour-de-force performance in Sorrentino’s “The Great Beauty,” a Fellini-inspired ode to Rome whose man-about-town hero, Jep Gambardella, questions his cynicism and ennui.
Other leading man roles include the famous turn-of-the-century Neapolitan actor Eduardo Scarpetta in Mario Martone’s “The King of Laughter,” which premiered at Venice in 2021; and his turn as a shady businessman in 2008’s “Gomorrah” by Matteo Garrone, based on the Roberto Saviano novel about the Camorra mafia.
Born in 1958 in Naples, Servillo honed his craft in experimental theatre in the 1970s and 1980s in the southern city before going on to win acclaim in films.
Servillo — who has called himself a “theatre militant” and continues to perform onstage — has won two European Film Awards and four David di Donatello awards, Italy’s Oscar equivalent.
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