Lucia Bosè

Life and career

After a number of years working in a bakery, Pasticceria Galli, in her native city, in 1947 she won the second edition of Miss Italia beauty contest. Later she acted in Dino Risi’s short The Five days of Milan, then, in 1950 she made her big screen debut in Giuseppe De Santis’ Non c'è pace tra gli ulivi (No Peace Under the Olive Tree). The same year, she gave a performance as Paola Molon in Antonioni's Cronaca di un amore. In 1953, Michelangelo Antonioni asked her to play Clara Manni in La signora senza camelie and Juan Antonio Bardem cast her in the lead of Muerte de un ciclista (1955). She also appeared in the 1955 film Gli Sbandati and played the main female role in Luis Buñuel's Cela s'appelle l'aurore, 1956.

Her career had flourished until 1956, when she married Spanish bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguín, and gave up acting in order to raise their children, Miguel and Paola. In 1960 she eventually played an uncredited role in Jean Cocteau's Le testament d'Orphée, ou ne me demandez pas pourquoi! and then returned to the screen in the late 1960s, appearing in Fellini's Fellini Satyricon (1969) and starring in the Taviani Brothers' Under the Sign of Scorpio (1969), Mario Colucci's Something Creeping in The Dark (1971), Liliana Cavani's L'ospite (1972), Giulio Questi's Arcana (1972), Marguerite Duras' Nathalie Granger (1972), Beni Montresor's La messe dorée (1975), Jeanne Moreau's Lumière (1976) and Daniel Schmid's Violanta (1976). She has been active in Italian and Spanish films ever since, appearing in Francesco Rosi's Cronaca di una morte annunciata (1987), Agustí Villaronga's El niño de la luna (1989), Ferzan Özpetek's Harem suaré (1999) and Roberto Faenza's I vicerè (2007).