Giulietta Masina (22 February 1921 – 23 March 1994) was an Italian film and stage actress. She starred in La Strada and Nights of Cabiria, both winners of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, in 1954 and 1957, respectively. Masina won the Best Actress award at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival for the later film.

She was the wife and muse of the Italian film director Federico Fellini, in whom she found an artistic equal and collaborator. Owing to her intense performances of naïve characters dealing with cruel circumstances, Masina is sometimes called the "female Chaplin".

Biography

Several months after her marriage to Fellini, in 1943, Masina suffered a miscarriage after falling down a flight of stairs. She became pregnant again; Pierfederico (nicknamed Federichino) was born on 22 March 1945, but died from encephalitis a month later on 24 April. Masina and Fellini did not have another child.

Masina died from lung cancer on 23 March 1994 at age 73, five months after her husband's death on 31 October 1993. For her funeral, she requested that trumpeter Mauro Maur play "La Strada" by Nino Rota. She and her husband are buried together at Rimini cemetery in a tomb marked by a prow-shaped monument, the work of sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro.

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