Best actress of 1951 (no order)
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Anna Magnani was born in Rome, Italy (not in Egypt, as some biographies claim), on March 7, 1908. She was the child of Marina Magnani and an unknown father often said to be from Alexandria, Egypt, but whom Anna herself claimed was from the Calabria region of Italy although she never knew his name. Raised in poverty by her maternal grandmother in Rome after her mother left her, Anna worked her way through Rome's Academy of Dramatic Art by singing in cabarets and night-clubs, then began touring the countryside with small repertory companies.
Although she had a small role in a silent film in the late 1920s, she was not known as a film actress until Doctor, Beware (1941), directed by Vittorio De Sica. Her break-through film was Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City (1945) (A.K.A. Open City), generally regarded as the first commercially successful Italian neorealist film of the postwar years and the one that won her an international reputation. From then on, she didn't stop working in films and television, winning an Academy Award for her performance in the screen version of Tennessee Williams' The Rose Tattoo (1955), a part that was written for her by her close friend Williams. She worked with all of Italy's leading directors of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
She was renowned for her earthy, passionate, woman-of-the-soil roles. She and Rossellini were lovers for some years after Open City, until he began his infamous affair with Ingrid Bergman. She had one child, Luca, with Italian actor Massimo Serato. The boy was later stricken with polio and Magnani dedicated her life to caring for him. Her only marriage, to Italian director Goffredo Alessandrini in the mid-1930s, lasted only a short while and ended in an annulment. Her last film was Federico Fellini's Roma (1972). She died in her native Rome from pancreatic cancer the following year at age sixty-five.for "Beautiful"- Actress
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If a film were made of the life of Vivien Leigh, it would open in India just before World War I, where a successful British businessman could live like a prince. In the mountains above Calcutta, a little princess is born. Because of the outbreak of World War I, she is six years old the first time her parents take her to England. Her mother thinks she should have a proper English upbringing and insists on leaving her in a convent school - even though Vivien is two years younger than any of the other girls at the school. The only comfort for the lonely child is a cat that was in the courtyard of the school that the nuns let her take up to her dormitory. Her first and best friend at the school is an eight-year-old girl, Maureen O'Sullivan who has been transplanted from Ireland. In the bleakness of a convent school, the two girls can recreate in their imaginations the places they have left and places where they would some day like to travel. After Vivien has been at the school for 18 months, her mother comes again from India and takes her to a play in London. In the next six months Vivien will insist on seeing the same play 16 times. In India the British community entertained themselves at amateur theatricals and Vivien's father was a leading man. Pupils at the English convent school are eager to perform in school plays. It's an all-girls school, so some of the girls have to play the male roles. The male roles are so much more adventurous. Vivien's favorite actor is Leslie Howard, and at 19 she marries an English barrister who looks very much like him. The year is 1932. Vivien's best friend from that convent school has gone to California, where she's making movies. Vivien has an opportunity to play a small role in an English film, Things Are Looking Up (1935). She has only one line but the camera keeps returning to her face. The London stage is more exciting than the movies being filmed in England, and the most thrilling actor on that stage is Laurence Olivier. At a party Vivien finds out about a stage role, "The Green Sash", where the only requirement is that the leading lady be beautiful. The play has a very brief run, but now she is a real actress. An English film is going to be made about Elizabeth I. Laurence gets the role of a young favorite of the queen who is sent to Spain. Vivien gets a much smaller role as a lady-in-waiting of the queen who is in love with Laurence's character. In real life, both fall in love while making this film, Fire Over England (1937). In 1938, Hollywood wants Laurence to play Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights (1939). Vivien, who has just recently read Gone with the Wind (1939), thinks that the role of Scarlett O'Hara is the first role for an actress that would be really exciting to bring to the screen. She sails to America for a brief vacation. In New York she gets on a plane for the first time to rush to California to see Laurence. They have dinner with Myron Selznick the night that his brother, David O. Selznick, is burning Atlanta on a backlot of MGM (actually they are burning old sets that go back to the early days of silent films to make room to recreate an Atlanta of the 1860s). Vivien is 26 when Gone with the Wind (1939) makes a sweep of the Oscars in 1939. So let's show 26-year-old Vivien walking up to the stage to accept her Oscar and then as the Oscar is presented the camera focuses on Vivien's face and through the magic of digitally altering images, the 26-year-old face merges into the face of Vivien at age 38 getting her second Best Actress Oscar for portraying Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). She wouldn't have returned to America to make that film had not Laurence been going over there to do a film, Carrie (1952) based on Theodore Dreiser's novel "Sister Carrie". Laurence tells their friends that his motive for going to Hollywood to make films is to get enough money to produce his own plays for the London stage. He even has his own theater there, the St. James. Now Sir Laurence, with a seat in the British House of Lords, is accompanied by Vivien the day the Lords are debating about whether the St James should be torn down. Breaking protocol, Vivien speaks up and is escorted from the House of Lords. The publicity helps raise the funds to save the St. James. Throughout their two-decade marriage Laurence and Vivien were acting together on the stage in London and New York. Vivien was no longer Lady Olivier when she performed her last major film role, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961).for "A streetcar named desire"- Anita Björk is able to use simple means to give depth and character to a role. She has a way of expressing any emotion just by raising an eyebrow or twitching her lips. This was something she used to a large extent in her best movie, Alf Sjöberg's Miss Julie (1951) where she played the young lady at a country manor, planning to elope with Jean the butler.
She was bitten by the acting bug in her teens and went to Stockholm. She started her acting studies at the Royal Dramatic Theater in 1942 and quickly got major roles. Her breakthrough came 1948 in Jean Genet's 'The Maids', followed by such roles as Agnes in 'Henrik Ibsen's 'Brand', Julie in William Shakespeare's 'Romeo & Juliet', Eliza in George Bernard Shaw's 'Pygmalion' and Tintomara in 'Carl Jonas Love Almqvist''s 'Drottningens juvelsmycke'.
She met and fell in love with the writer Stig Dagerman and in 1951 she gave birth to a daughter. The three of them went to Hollywood for Anita to negotiate a role in Alfred Hitchcock's I Confess (1953). But when word came out that Anita wasn't married to Stig, Hollywood lost interest. His divorce from his ex-wife wasn't final until 1953 and apparently it wasn't acceptable to Hollywood for a contract player to live with someone married to somebody else.
In West Germany she played against Gregory Peck in Night People (1954) but when the movie failed at the box office, so did her career abroad. Also, her husband killed himself and Anita decided to stick to the Royal Dramatic Theater where she has appeared in more than 80 roles through the years. In movies, she has appeared mainly in supporting roles.
Of her movies, the most interesting are Miss Julie (1951), På dessa skuldror (1948) and Mannekäng i rött (1958).for "Miss Julie" - Actress
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Rare indeed to spot a dark-haired Swede on film but the delicately beautiful Maj-Britt Nilsson was certainly one of them, along with Harriet Andersson, who went on to captivate film audiences in the bleak films of Ingmar Bergman.
Born in Stockholm on December 11, 1924, the lovely Nilsson was initially trained at the Royal Dramatic Theater. She began her film career inauspiciously playing a young schoolgirl in Tänk, om jag gifter mig med prästen (1941) [If I Should Marry the Minister] starring Viveca Lindfors. Gaining experience in such films as Alf Sjöberg's Resan bort (1945), she played the title role in the dramatic Maria (1947) and moved swiftly into leading roles. A stage triumph in Jean Genet's "The Maids" in 1948 led to her association with Ingmar Bergman who spotlighted her in three of his finest early works: To Joy (1950) [To Joy], in which she plays wife to an adulterous orchestra player; Summer Interlude (1951) [Summer Interlude], in which she portrays a ballerina recalling a tragic summer romance; and Secrets of Women (1952) [Secrets of Women] as one of four sisters-in-law reflecting on their respective wifedoms while waiting for their husbands to arrive at a summer hideaway. Receiving rave reviews for her work, it was expected that she would become a main staple of Bergman's prestigious company of players. Surprisingly she never made another film for him. The roles in her later celluloid work went on to pale in comparison.
Nilsson seldom strayed outside her homeland when it came to filming outside the rare occasion of a German/Austrian movie or two. A brief marriage to singer and composer Anders Börje led to a long and fulfilling one with theater director Per Gerhard in 1951. She subsequently left the Royal Dramatic Theater to work alongside him at Stockholm's Vasa Theater. The couple would stay there for the next three decades. One of her stage roles was that of Maggie the Cat in a Swedish-language version of Tennessee Williams's "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof". She made two brief and minor film comebacks in the 1970s, the second of which, the Swedish-made Bluff Stop (1977), being her last. She retired completely in 1985. Some time during the 1980s the couple took up residence on the French Riviera. Ms. Nilsson died on December 19, 2006 in Cannes, France at age 82.for "Summer interlude"- Actress
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Eleni Zafeiriou was born in 1916 in Larissa, Greece. She was an actress, known for Love and Blood (1968), Love Stories (1959) and I Kypros stis floges (1964). She died on 2 September 2004 in Athens, Greece.for "Bitter bread"