1990–1999: Early roles and breakthrough In 1990, Italian director
Carlo Vanzina noticed a photo of Monica Bellucci in a magazine and recommended her to
Dino Risi, who was looking for a "new face" for his
television miniseries . Bellucci had never thought of becoming an actress and was surprised to be chosen for a role. The same year, Bellucci made her film debut in , which
Francesco Laudadio directed. In 1992, Bellucci played one of the three brides of Dracula in the horror film ''
Bram Stoker's Dracula. Roman Coppola saw a photograph of Bellucci in the Italian magazine Zoom'' and implored his father
Francis Ford to offer her a film role. At Coppola's request, Bellucci stayed in Los Angeles during filming; she was apprehensive about the city and believed her English needed improvement. She decided her next acting work would be in Italy. Following her minor role in ''Bram Stoker's Dracula'', Bellucci returned to Italy and enrolled in acting classes. In her view, the Italian film industry needed to invest more money to promote films internationally. Bellucci moved to France to improve her career prospects, Bellucci's portrayal of Lisa in
The Apartment (1996), a "moody" French
film noir, earned her a
César Award nomination for
Most Promising Actress. Gavanndra Hodge of
The Sunday Times stated that her "break-out role" was in the European
arthouse film
The Apartment. Bellucci's second French film was
Jan Kounen's
Dobermann (1997), in which she portrayed a mute
Romani woman and had to learn
sign language beforehand to embody her character. Recalling the filming process, she expressed an inclination for (stage settings) "that pass more through bodies than through words". For her leading role as Giulia Giovannini in the Italian
comedy-drama (1998), Bellucci received a
Globo d'oro Award for Best Actress.
The Apartment later won a
British Academy Film Award (BAFTA) for
Best Film not in the English language, prompting film director
Stephen Hopkins to take a close interest in Bellucci.
Under Suspicion was selected as one of the
2000 Cannes Film Festival's closing films, marking her red-carpet debut at the annual event. After the film's release, Freeman said: "It's all there in her eyes. She has this quality that reminds me of Jeanne Moreau. There is a sense of having been there, that she's had a life." Bellucci returned to Italian cinema, portraying Malèna Scordia, an enigmatic, envied and coveted
World War II widow whose life unfolds before a 13-year-old boy in the Tornatore-directed film
Malèna (2000), which is set in
Sicily. Writing for
The Guardian, Mark Salisbury considered Bellucci's portrayal in the
Oscar-nominated film her "breakout performance". it was her first international success and caused her to be "besieged by offers" from
Hollywood when
Miramax secured the film for US distribution. Bellucci starred with
Samuel Le Bihan and
Vincent Cassel in
Christophe Gans'
Brotherhood of the Wolf, a 2001 French
period drama film that is based on historical events involving the
beast of Gévaudan that decimated the population of in 18th-century France.
The Washington Post film critic
Stephen Hunter found the film's stylistic approach too dense, obscuring Bellucci's "fabulous natural asset"; she played an "underused" role as a courtesan–
papist spy.
Brotherhood of the Wolf was a
box-office success in France, where it attracted five million viewers and grossed million worldwide, including $11 million in the US, against a budget of about million. The film earned Bellucci a
Best Supporting Actress nomination at the 2002
Saturn Awards. The filming of
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra (2002), in which Bellucci starred with
Jamel Debbouze, which, with its light-hearted, comic atmosphere, was one of Bellucci's favourite cinematographic experiences. She portrayed the "prickly"
Cleopatra, the queen of
Ancient Egypt, in the comedy film, which was directed by
Alain Chabat.
The Guardian film critic
Peter Bradshaw wrote Bellucci was "certainly talented enough ... to merit getting the role of Cleopatra in some serious treatment", but before then, she had to perform in a "funny mainstream commercial" French production. The film was a success, selling 14 million tickets in France at the time of its release and grossing more than $128 million worldwide. for the promotion of In 2002, Bellucci co-starred with Cassel in 's "violent" arthouse
thriller . The revenge film, which was filmed on
Super 16 film using hand-held cameras, depicts Bellucci playing Alex, who is graphically raped for nine uninterrupted minutes in an underpass, a scene Bellucci had to film four times. Audiences at the
2002 Cannes Film Festival were outraged during the midnight premiere of
Irréversible, with some calling it "unsustainable". Lisa Nesselson of
Variety said Bellucci showed "responses to peril and joy [that are] particularly memorable". The film has been studied in
film schools. Noé said he "has never seen an actress so charismatic ... with that much guts ... her performance is incredibly audacious". K. Austin Collins of
Rolling Stone called
Irréversible "one of the most controversial movies ever". Bellucci co-starred with
Bruce Willis in
Antoine Fuqua's
Tears of the Sun (2003), an
action-adventure film that is set during a civil war in Nigeria. Bellucci played Doctor Lena Kendricks, who is working for a humanitarian organisation in a village that is threatened by rebels. Film critic
David Denby of
The New Yorker said some of Bellucci's scenes were exaggeratedly stylised but praised the film's visual prowess.
Los Angeles Times film critic
Kenneth Turan lauded Bellucci's "fierce" portrayal of Kendricks, who also had a "stereotypically fiery temperament".
Tears of the Sun garnered mixed reviews from critics and was a box-office disappointment. Bellucci successively portrayed the character
Persephone in the two 2003
science fiction films
The Matrix Reloaded and
The Matrix Revolutions. She described her character as "dangerous, sensual with some sense of humor", recalling fond memories with
Carrie-Anne Moss,
Laurence Fishburne, and
Keanu Reeves throughout the filming process in Australia. Film critic
Andrew Sarris of
The New York Observer gave
The Matrix Reloaded a positive review, grossing $742.1 million worldwide against a budget of $150 million. Alongside its release, Bellucci appeared on the cover of
Rolling Stone Spanish edition. The Merovingian (
Lambert Wilson) again accompanied Bellucci as her screen husband in
The Matrix Revolutions, which received mixed reviews from critics. It grossed $427 million against a production and marketing budget of $185 million.
2004–2007: The Passion of the Christ and career progression In
Rome, before filming
Tears of the Sun, Bellucci was notified a
Mel Gibson film about Jesus was in production and she asked to meet with him about the role of
Mary Magdalene. Eventually, Bellucci played an expressive Mary Magdalene in Gibson's Christian drama
The Passion of the Christ (2004), which depicts the final hours of the life of Jesus Christ. The film includes dialogue in
Aramaic and
Latin, languages Bellucci had to quickly learn. According to film critic
Paul Clinton, Bellucci "is excellent as Mary Magdalene". Catholics objected to Bellucci playing Magdalene.
The Passion of the Christ was a major commercial success with a worldwide gross of over $611 million against a budget of $30 million. On 2 July 2005, Bellucci was awarded the European Golden Globe for cinema at Rome's 45th Globo d'oro ceremony. She said she appreciated acting in both American and European films. Gilliam later said: "[i]mmediately she comes on-screen, it seems to me the whole film lifts up into another realm, a realm of sex and sensuality and danger". She also voiced Cappy for the French version of the 2005 animated film
Robots. Bellucci had a leading role in
Bertrand Blier's French
romantic comedy How Much Do You Love Me?, which also starred . Bellucci portrayed Daniela, the most beautiful prostitute in
Pigalle, Paris, whom a lottery-winning office worker offers to pay to live with him. A journalist at called the film "a hymn to the beauty of Monica Bellucci", and said it is neither Blier's best film nor his most failed. Nesselson commented Bellucci was optimally used in the film because she stimulates the viewer's senses and intellect. In 2006, Bellucci starred alongside
Daniel Auteuil in 's period comedy-drama
Napoleon and Me as baroness Emilia, who has a turbulent relationship Martino (
Elio Germano). The film depicts
Napoleon Bonaparte during his exile to
Elba from 1814 to 1815. Author
Mark Feeney said Bellucci does not take "things too seriously" in the film. Bellucci said she declined to play a role in the
blockbuster 300 and instead appeared in the ( film)
The Stone Council. Bellucci was cast after the initial announcement of
Sophie Marceau for the lead role in the thriller.
The Stone Council was adapted from the eponymous novel by
Jean-Christophe Grangé. The film differs by character names; the book's female hero is called Diane Thiberge, whereas Bellucci starred as Laura Siprien, a tormented adoptive mother who is confronted by killers who want to steal her child. of wrote that she "delivers one of her best performances on the big screen" with a muted sex appeal. Bellucci's hair was cut short for the film, a preferred style of French cinema hairstylist John Nollet, who also styled Bellucci on the sets of
Brotherhood of the Wolf and
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra. Bellucci starred opposite
Paul Giamatti and
Clive Owen in
Michael Davis' action thriller ''
Shoot 'Em Up'', which was released in the US in September 2007. Bellucci portrayed Donna Quintano, who teams up with Owen's character Mr Smith to protect a baby during a bloody fight. Bellucci's character is another prostitute with a different approach than that of her character in
How Much Do You Love Me?; Bellucci said she felt empathy for female sex workers, who she believes retain "faith in humanity". She was fond of this sort of paradox and tried to highlight this virtue in her portrayals of characters of all types but noted she could explore the opposite spectrum. Richard James Havis of the
South China Morning Post wrote: "It's the latest in a slew of extreme roles". Bellucci continued to work in French film productions and starred alongside Auteuil in
Alain Corneau's
The Second Wind, a remake of the critically acclaimed
Jean-Pierre Melville's 1966
gangster film
of the same title. Bellucci portrayed Manouche, a tenacious character who has affection for an escaped convicted gangster. Bellucci had the idea of dyeing her hair blonde to adhere to the style of female film noir characters of the 1950s and 1960s. , a critic for , wrote Bellucci was alone in a "fatally virile" context but she got through it "to the point of becoming the spectator's compass and the flesh of a film that sometimes lacks it". In November 2007,
Le Monde reported on the commercial failures of
The Second Wind and
The Stone Council.
2008–2017: Continued international work in 2009 Bellucci felt a "visceral" need to act in Italian films regularly. and author Gino Moliterno praised her performance as "extremely powerful". Next, Bellucci played Alba in the Italian film
The Man Who Loves, where she was enamoured with
Pierfrancesco Favino's character Roberto through a cinematic
flashback. On 5 March 2009, Bellucci received a World Actress Award at the
Women's World Award in
Vienna. The same year, Bellucci co-starred with Marceau in the thriller ''
Don't Look Back, a sequel to In My Skin'', both of which were directed by
Marina de Van. The film depicts Marceau's character seeing changes around her and noticing her body transform into Bellucci's. J.B. Morain of
Les Inrockuptibles said Bellucci's physical attitude and "attention to others have never been so well filmed".
Varietys
Derek Elley said Bellucci "looks elegant and mystified", although both film critics noted the clumsily written dialogue. Bellucci reunited with Reeves in
Rebecca Miller's romantic comedy-drama
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (2009), which co-stars
Winona Ryder and
Robin Wright. Bellucci portrayed Gigi Lee, the former wife of a successful publisher Herb (
Alan Arkin). She next appeared in a cameo role in Tornatore's autobiographical film
Baarìa, a
family saga traversing several generations that was filmed in
Bagheria, Sicily. In 2010, Bellucci portrayed Laura Leviani in
Larysa Kondracki's
biopic drama thriller
The Whistleblower, which was primarily filmed in Romania and depicts a vast human trafficking network that was discovered in post-war
Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1999. Hélène Delye of
Le Monde described Bellucci's character as a "grizzled, stubborn, insensitive civil servant".
The Whistleblower received a mixed critical reception. Bellucci made three films in seven months; these were
Giovanni Veronesi's
The Ages of Love,
Philippe Garrel's
A Burning Hot Summer, and
Bahman Ghobadi's
Rhino Season. In the third segment of the comedy
anthology film The Ages of Love (2011), Bellucci starred opposite
Robert De Niro, who played a divorced American art-history professor living in Rome who falls in love with Bellucci's character Viola. De Niro was delighted to work with Bellucci, saying she had "worked her magic" on him and that he had accepted the role because he wanted to act alongside her. It was filmed two months after the birth of Bellucci's second child. An improvised scene shows De Niro performing a striptease in front of Bellucci, which echoes in reverse a sequence in the 1963 film
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, in which
Sophia Loren stripteased for
Marcello Mastroianni. In 2014, Bellucci appeared in
Alice Rohrwacher's
The Wonders as Milly Catena, host of a televised contest. In the film, which combines autobiographical aspects with fiction, Bellucci's character is depicted as a
Pagan priestess wearing elaborate clothes and surrounded with ancient figures.
The Wonders was critically acclaimed and won the
Grand Prix Award at the
2014 Cannes Film Festival. Bellucci stated Édoin had offered her "one of the most beautiful roles" of her career and described a stimulating fear of embodying Bernard's character that emotionally affected her. The film garnered generally positive reviews and Bellucci's performance was unanimously praised. For her portrayal of Bernard, Bellucci received the Best Actress Award from the
Dublin Film Critics' Circle at
Dublin International Film Festival. At 50, Bellucci became the oldest
Bond girl at that time in the
James Bond film franchise, playing Lucia Sciarra in
Sam Mendes'
Spectre (2015). Bellucci was initially sceptical about Mendes' project, but he arguedthat casting a mature woman in a James Bond film would be innovative. Bellucci felt gratified to have been the first to portray a role she defined as a "James Bond lady". The film grossed $880 million worldwide against a $250–300 million production budget. Guy Lodge of
Variety called Bellucci "[o]ne of the most restlessly globe-trotting stars in world cinema" who does not want national borders or age brackets to dictate her filmography. In 2016, Bellucci had a guest role in the third season of the American comedy-drama
streaming television series
Mozart in the Jungle, an adaptation of
Blair Tindall's memoir
Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music, portraying Alessandra, an opera singer and latest collaborator of New York symphony orchestra conductor] Rodrigo (
Gael García Bernal).
Varietys Nick Vivarelli called Bellucci the "Italian actress with international star power". Bellucci portrayed Nevesta in the film
On the Milky Road (2016), a romance that is set during the 1990s
Bosnian War and whose lead role was played by the film's director
Emir Kusturica. She said, "I decided to be an actress, not a politician. I recount political choices through my artistic choices." She had to adapt to challenging production conditions in a "land of beauty and violence", and Kusturica suffered "great [mental] pain" during filming, which spanned four summers. Her performance in the film earned her the
Nastro d'Argento europeo (European Silver Ribbon Award), which was held on 1 July 2017 at the
ancient theatre of Taormina in Sicily. In 2017, Bellucci appeared in the 14th episode of the
third season of
Twin Peaks, playing a fictional version of herself in a dream experienced by FBI Deputy Director
Gordon Cole (
David Lynch) in which she dines with him in Paris and gives him cryptic information that he believes may help him solve a case. Though the episode's official title is "Part 14", the third season's
Blu-ray release titled it "We Are Like the Dreamer", a line spoken by Bellucci. Also in 2017, she received the honorary
Donostia Award at the
San Sebastián International Film Festival.
2018–present: Recent career In 2018, Bellucci had a leading role in the Australian comedy science-fiction horror film
Nekrotronic, playing a
necromancer and demonic soul-eater. In his appraisal of the film, Stephen Dalton of
The Hollywood Reporter said Bellucci portrayed her "diva" character through an "operatic camp-vamp" performance but that her acting style would be best suited to films by
Tim Burton and
Guillermo del Toro. Also in 2018, Bellucci appeared in the third season of the
France 2 comedy television series (Ten Per cent), playing herself with self-mockery. The well-received show was initially renamed
Call My Agent! after its
Netflix purchase. In
Claude Lelouch's film
The Best Years of a Life (2019), which is set in
Normandy, Bellucci had a cameo role as Elena, the daughter of Jean-Louis Duroc (
Jean-Louis Trintignant). The film garnered positive critical responses. Following his documentary film
Maria by Callas (2017), writer and director Tom Volf proposed to Bellucci his project based on his book , which includes the writings of opera singer
Maria Callas. Following the film, Bellucci made her theatrical debut at the
Marigny Theatre in Paris held from 27 November to 6 December 2019 in
Maria Callas: Letters and Memoirs, a one-woman show Volf directed. In the show, Bellucci recited letters alone on stage and wore two dresses that had belonged to Callas. Bellucci has intermittently performed the show over a number of years. In 2021, at the
66th David di Donatello ceremony, Bellucci received a
David Special Award for her career achievements. She co-starred as part of an
ensemble cast including
Liam Neeson and
Guy Pearce in
Martin Campbell's action thriller
Memory (2022), in which she played Davana Sealman, an unscrupulous real-estate magnate. She was initially interested in the duality of the antagonist's persona she would play and wanted to avoid
typecasting based on her physical appearance, which she had experienced in the past. According to
Entertainment Weekly critic Leah Greenblatt
Memory is "wrapped in leaden dialogue and B-movie cliché" and Bellucci appears "blasé". In 2022, Bellucci performed
Maria Callas: Letters and Memoirs at
Her Majesty's Theatre in London,
Chatelet Theatre in Paris, and at venues in
Istanbul and Los Angeles. She won the Nastro d'Argento Award for Protagonist of the Year in Documentaries 2024 for her interpretation of Callas in
Letters and Memoirs. ==Other activities==