Marcello Mastroianni; Suave Italian Actor Became an International Star

Marcello Mastroianni, the witty, affable and darkly handsome Italian actor who sprang to international consciousness in Federico Fellini’s 1960 classic “La Dolce Vita,” died Wednesday at his Paris home. He was 72.

Mastroianni, a comic but also suave and romantic leading man who appeared in 120 motion pictures, had suffered from pancreatic cancer.

Actress Catherine Deneuve, their daughter, Chiara, and his other daughter, Barbara, were with him at his death.

Mastroianni was much loved around the world in his roles opposite Italian actress Sophia Loren in 11 movies. He earned Academy Award nominations for best acting in two of them, “Divorce--Italian Style” and “A Special Day.”

The actor gained a third Oscar nomination for the Soviet film “Dark Eyes,” which also earned him a best actor award at the Cannes Film Festival. Another Cannes award was presented to him for his work in the 1970 film “The Pizza Triangle.”

Mastroianni’s first film with Loren was “Marriage Italian Style” in 1964, and his most recent the 1994 satire “Ready to Wear.” In the latter, Loren repeated the strip scene she had performed for Mastroianni in “Divorce--Italian Style.”

The actor’s last film was “Three Lives and Only One Death,” with daughter Chiara as co-star.

Modest and self-effacing, Mastroianni belittled his sexy screen image and once asserted in an American television interview: “I am not a sex addict.”

But in 1972, he caused an international scandal by leaving his wife of 22 years, Italian actress Flora Carabella, to live with Deneuve. That relationship lasted only a few years.

Despite his popularity with American movie-goers, Mastroianni shunned Hollywood for decades. He preferred to make films with European directors, working for American filmmakers only in “Ready to Wear” and “Used People,” the latter co-starring Shirley MacLaine, Jessica Tandy and Kathy Baker and released in the U.S. in 1993.

“At my age [then 68] I can take pleasure in that I always did everything for spiritual needs, never for money,” Mastroianni told The Times when he was on a promotion tour for that film. “I like very much to act! That is my food. . . . Ah, acting . . . it’s exhibitionism. An actor is like a child: He wants everybody to be interested in him.”

Mastroianni was born Sept. 28, 1924, in Fontana Liri, Italy, a small town near Rome, and grew up in Turin and Rome. His father was a carpenter who put the boy to work in his shop at an early age.

The future actor studied surveying and architecture, but when World War II began he was ordered to draw maps for the Germans, and in 1943 they sent him to a forced labor camp in the Italian Alps. Mastroianni escaped to Venice, where he lived in near poverty as a tourists’ artist until the war ended.

After working as a cashier for a British filmmaker in Rome, he joined an amateur theatrical group at the University of Rome, where he was taking some classes. There he met Fellini and his wife, actress Giulietta Masina.

Mastroianni had made his film debut with a bit part in “I Miserabili,” an Italian version of “Les Miserables.” But his break occurred when a scout came to see Masina, who was playing opposite Mastroianni in the play “Angelica” in 1948.

The scout offered Mastroianni a job with Italian stage and film director Luchino Visconti.

“He was the most distinguished director in the Italian theater at the time. Very important luck,” Mastroianni told a Times writer 45 years later. “An encounter can change your life, like in the old-style Hollywood movies.”

Visconti cast Mastroianni memorably as Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire.” The actor stayed with the company several years, performing in the Italian versions of other classic plays such as “Death of a Salesman,” “The Glass Menagerie” and “Uncle Vanya.”

From 1950 to 1955, Mastroianni had character roles in 27 films. But, although he became popular with Italian audiences, he fretted that his screen career would be limited to playing taxi drivers and the like. More varied roles followed, however, and his versatility was noted.

In 1960, Fellini cast Mastroianni in the leading male role in “La Dolce Vita,” which at long last made him an international star.

“In ‘La Dolce Vita’ I found my first real role where it was all me, and all right,” the actor told Newsweek in 1962.

It was the first of many Fellini films for Mastroianni, including “8 1/2” in 1963, “City of Women” in 1979 and “Ginger and Fred” in 1985. He also played himself in the Fellini memoir film “Intervista” in 1987.

“Fellini calls me [saying], ‘I don’t know how to explain the film, I have no script,’ ” Mastroianni once told The Times, describing his interaction with the Italian director. “He likes me, what I do. It’s a beautiful position for an actor--when there’s no script, you are also a spectator. That’s the way Fellini works. . . . He’s my best friend, I love him.

“You ask me who are the three most influential people in my life: first, Luchino Visconti--I learned many things from him. Second, Fellini. And the third I’m waiting to meet.”

Mastroianni remained enthusiastic about acting until the end.

“I plan to make 50 or 60 more films before I die,” he told The Times three years ago, “and I don’t want to die.”

* A REMEMBRANCE: Mastroianni in life was every bit the witty, affable charmer he portrayed in countless films. F1