Mauro Di Francesco today he is 73 years old. He stopped being an actor. He has taken refuge in Tuscany and is not bored. “Many people tried to contact me, I must have said at least twenty no.” He would only move if «they call me Sorrentino or Tornatore, Pupi Avati maybe Quentin Tarantino. Then I would think again…” He always wants to joke. He didn’t get over that one.
Jerry Calà: «What a fear for the heart attack, but for me life is still fun. Drugs? I tried cocaine”
The beginnings
At 15 he was already in the theater with maestro Giorgio Strehler, then Ugo Tognazzi and his jokes on Monica Vitti: «We filmed Sorry if it’s not long with Monica – he tells Corriere della Sera – The two of them had dressing rooms next to each other. She hated garlic. Ugo, that unfortunate man, bought a braid of it and ordered the secretary to fry a few segments of it on the stove all day, leaving the door open…”.
Then there were the years of the Milan Derby «with Abatantuono, Giorgio Faletti, Massimo Boldi, Giorgio Porcaro and Ernst Thole we founded the Repellenti group, so Enzo Jannacci and Beppe Viola christened us. I brought Diego to the stage. He was the electrician of the Gatti di Vicolo Miracoli. He had to light a single beacon. But he was always locked in the bathroom with some girl, so he was fired. “Come on, come with me.” I was Eva Kant and he was Diabolik. We went on for a while, then he began to act like a southerner and continued alone.” But he was suspended from the Derby, he still tells Corsera: «While Jannacci was on stage, behind the scenes, for a laugh, I lowered my trousers and showed my butt to those present. “It’s not done.” And he suspended me.”
Taste of sea
For Diego he gave up the first Sapore di Mare and in his place they took Jerry Calà: «In those days we were very close, like ass and underwear». But not the second film. «By script I fell in love with Pascale Reynaud and it happened in her life too. I was with Laura Belli, I confessed my confusion but I went home. But she let me find my bags outside the door.” And speaking of women: «I had a lot of them, I had fun, I was young, cute, nice. Not just me. I liked Teo a lot, Diego too, he was handsome. Faletti was playing badly, he started playing the guitar, it exhausted them like that. No Boldi, he had his Marisa, everything about his house and church…”.
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