Virnia Lisa Pieralisi, or Virna Lisa, as we knew her, was born in Ancona, Italy in 1936 and died yesterday in Rome. Known to many as a “blonde bombshell”, she worked as an actress from the time she was a teenager right up until the end and will be seen, posthumously in Cristina Comencini’s upcoming Latin Lover.
Director Maurizio Sciarra remembers Virna Lisi:
“The news took me by surprise and brought up a lot of memories. It was 1988 and the film, Buon Natale, Buon Anno (Merry Christmas, Happy, Happy New Year), my last film as assistant to director Luigi Comencini. Virna Lisi was the wife (separated by necessity”, of Michel Serrault. What a magnificent couple! Actors of great talent and wonderful people. And above all “normal”.
‘I had never met her before, it was easy to get to know her. She was on the set with the strange normality of a person who has done this many times before, but continued to have the curiosity of someone who was doing something new…she made them (her scenes) believable and a with a heart.
A great dancer, she loved the scenes in which she had to dance at an old dance hall at the end of the film.’
“I remember the “sincere look of admiration” (I’m just translating here) in the eyes of the company,especially the cameramen, when, during a break, she showed in a bikini and went sunbathing. She was so beautiful! I saw her again after many years at the film festival in Bari, a few years later, and it reminded me of the effect it left on me and the warm that remained in my heart. It is a such a shame when someone like that leaves us.”
Nessun uomo è un’Isola,
intero in se stesso.
Ogni uomo è un pezzo del Continente,
una parte della Terra.
Se una Zolla viene portata via dall’onda del Mare,
la Terra ne è diminuita,
come se un Promontorio fosse stato al suo posto,
o una Magione amica o la tua stessa Casa.
Ogni morte d’uomo mi diminusce,
perchè io partecipo all’Umanità.
E così non mandare mai a chiedere per chi suona la Campana:
Essa suona per te.
— John Donne
I Love Italian Everything 