Giuliana De Sio made Carlo Calenda fall in love. No, it’s not new summer gossip and not even fake news from the pre-election climate, but an anecdote that the actress told in a lengthy interview with Corriere della Sera, in which she opened the drawer of memories of her private and work life. And among the tastiest passages there is one onMeeting with the leader of Action, which took place on the set of Cuore in 1984the Rai1 miniseries directed by Luigi Comencini, Calenda’s grandfather.
LOVE GIULIANA DE SIO MADE CALENDA – But what happened during filming of the legendary drama that marked a television era? Saying it is the same Giuliana De Sio, who played the legendary Maestrina with the red pencil, while Carlo Calenda embodied his favorite student. “In a scene I gave him two little kisses on the cheeks, which he didn’t expect: he blushed, his whole body was shaking, he was in love with me!… I didn’t notice his excitement, I discovered it many years later when he himself narrated the episode in a television interview,” adds De Sio. And the version completely agrees with that of the politician: “I have a fantastic memory of this experience, I admit that I was very much in love with De Sio at the time, even though I was only ten years old. I didn’t come out, but at least there was a scene where I kissed her on the cheek,” Calenda explained a few years ago.
ACTRESS’ GREAT LOVES AND ENCOUNTERS – But there are several artists De Sio has brought to despair, from Alessandro Haber to Elio Petri – the love of his life – to Giorgio Strehler, with whom he made his debut at Piccolo in Milan. The director fell in love with her so much that he eagerly courted her. “I was her type of woman, even with my red hair, and every day during rehearsals she left me a letter in my dressing room with nice words of appreciation. I felt loved, guided and empowered,” she explains. On the other hand, she was never courted Massimo Troisi, with whom he developed a nice friendship despite everything the faux pas at the presentation. “We were in a meeting in the hotel lobby and I’m starting to hear ticking, so I ask: do any of you have an alarm clock in your pocket? Massimo unbuttons his shirt, shows me a scar that runs through the entire breastbone… he had a flap in his heart. An absurd fool, I didn’t know how to fix it but he joked about it to downplay it.
THE MEMORY OF THE ALCOHOLATED MOTHER – One of the most intensive passages of the interview is the one about the family, the flight from home and the complex relationship to her mother, who took up drinking when her husband left her with two girls to raise. “She was an unhappy woman, one of the unhappiest I’ve ever known,” he reveals. “It’s difficult being close to an alcoholic who is also your mother. In the morning she was lucid for a while and I seemed to see her as a mother like many others, let’s say normal. Then she started drinking beer, she became aggressive, uncomfortable, lonely, withdrawn, and she wasn’t my mother anymore. I slalomed between her moments of clarity and those when she was crazy to explore a possible relationship with her. He met the good and the bad by drinking. When I left she suffered greatly but I had no choice, I couldn’t wait to let go of all this heaviness and I was saved.