Valentina Cortese (1 January 1923 – 10 July 2019) was an Italian actress.

She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in François Truffaut's Day for Night (1973).

Personal life

Born in Milan to a family from Stresa (Piedmont), Cortese married Richard Basehart, her co-star in The House on Telegraph Hill, in 1951, and had one son with him, the actor Jackie Basehart; they divorced in 1960. She never remarried. Jackie Basehart died in Milan in 2015, predeceasing Cortese.

Cortese died at the age of 96 on 10 July 2019.

Career

She made her screen debut in Italian films in 1940, leading to her first internationally acclaimed roles in Riccardo Freda's 1948 Italian film Les Misérables with Gino Cervi and a very young Marcello Mastroianni, in which she played both Fantine and Cosette, and the 1949 British film The Glass Mountain (1949), which led to a number of roles in American films of the period, but continued to make films in Europe with such directors as Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini and François Truffaut.

She signed a contract with 20th Century Fox in 1948. She starred in Malaya (1949), a Second World Warfilm about smuggling and guerrilla warfare against the Japanese with Spencer Tracy and James Stewart, Jules Dassin's Thieves' Highway (1949) with Richard Conte and Lee J. Cobb, The House on Telegraph Hill(1951) directed by Robert Wise and co-starring Richard Basehart and William Lundigan, and Joseph L. Mankiewicz's The Barefoot Contessa (1954), with Humphrey Bogart, Ava Gardner and Edmond O'Brien. In Europe she starred in Michelangelo Antonioni's Le Amiche (1955), Gérard Brach's The Boat on the Grass(1971), Terry Gilliam's British film The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), and in Franco Zeffirelliprojects such as the film Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972), the miniseries Jesus of Nazareth (1977) and the film Sparrow (1993). Her final American film role was in When Time Ran Out (1980).

Selected filmography

• The Jester's Supper (1942)
• The Queen of Navarre (1942)
• Girl of the Golden West (1942)
• The Ten Commandments (1945) (segment "Non nominare il nome di Dio invano")
• Bullet for Stefano (1947)
• Thieves' Highway (1949)
• Malaya (1949)
• The Glass Mountain (1949)
• Shadow of the Eagle (1950)
• Women Without Names (1950)
• The House on Telegraph Hill (1951)
• The Rival of the Empress (1951)
• Secret People (1952)
• The Walk (1953)
• Angels of Darkness (1954)
• The Barefoot Contessa (1954) as Eleanora Torlato-Favrini
• Square of Violence (1961)
• Barabbas (1961)
• The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963)
• Juliet of the Spirits (1965)
• The Legend of Lylah Clare (1968)
• The Love Mates (1970)
• The Boat on the Grass (1971)
• The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire (1971)
• Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972)
• The Assassination of Trotsky (1972)
• Day for Night (1973)
• Kidnap Syndicate (1975)
• Jesus of Nazareth (1977)
• When Time Ran Out (1980)
• The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)
• Sparrow (1993)