Italian Actress Lucia Modugno Dies at 94
Italian cinema actress Lucia Modugno died in Rome on November 2 at the age of 94. Spanning six decades on sets and stages, her career began after director Roberto Rossellini cast her as a young partisan courier in his 1959 film Il generale della Rovere.
Born in Bari in 1931, Modugno stepped onto the screen in a role that altered her trajectory. Her performance in Rossellini’s feature, which starred Vittorio De Sica and Sandra Milo, quickly pulled her out of obscurity. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, she moved across genres, working with directors such as Dino Risi and Ettore Scola, appearing in Mario Bava’s La ragazza che sapeva troppo and Sergio Corbucci’s 1966 spaghetti western Navajo Joe alongside Burt Reynolds. Reynolds later characterized that specific production as a brutal experience, calling it so severe that it deserved projection only in prisons and on airplanes where audiences could not escape.
The Shift to Stage Direction and Writing
Modugno stepped away from film and television in the 1980s to focus on the theater. She established her own company, serving as director, playwright, and adapter for productions spanning works by Georges Feydeau, George Bernard Shaw, Alberto Moravia, and Alexander Galin. Her stage casts over the years featured actors including Emma Gramatica, Aldo Fabrizi, Erminio Macario, Andrea Giordana, and Erika Blanc.
Alongside her theatrical work, Modugno built a literary footprint late in life. Her 2005 memoir, Vengo a prendere il «caffè» da te, opened a sequence of published works that included Dietro le quinte. Dallo schermo al palcoscenico. Confidenze (in)confessabili, the 2015 novel Affollatissima solitudine, and Sonata a quattro mani. Her final publication, released in 2023, was titled Pirandello, questo mio sconosciuto and focused on the wife of the Sicilian playwright.
Return to Screen Productions and Ministerial Tributes
After roughly thirty years dedicated primarily to the stage, Modugno returned to film and television in the 2000s. Pupi Avati cast her in Gli amici del bar Margherita, and subsequent film roles included appearances in Che bella giornata alongside Checco Zalone and Gabriele Muccino’s Gli anni più belli. Her television credits in the later decades of her career included parts in the series Carabinieri, Il peccato e la Vergogna, and the television film SOS Befana, with her final screen credit arriving in 2022 in the series Home Sweet Rome.
Following news of her death, Undersecretary of Culture Lucia Borgonzoni released a statement remembering Modugno. Borgonzoni noted that the artist contributed significantly to Italian culture through elegance, talent, and steady dedication, moving naturally from the screen to the theater and later into directing and writing.
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⚫ L'attrice Lucia Modugno, diretta al cinema da Roberto Rossellini, Dino Risi, Ettore Scola e Mario Bava, e con una lunga carriera teatrale, è morta lunedì 2 novembre al Tiberia Hospital di Roma all'età di 94 anni. A darne notizia è stata la famiglia, che ha comunicato la… pic.twitter.com/RI4R5JEZB1