«I left home, my father forbade me to return. I loved free love, I had two husbands. At 76 I have never worked so hard”

Anna Galiena is a failed rebel, at least in her youth. He tells Corriere della Sera that «my father, when I was a minor, told me, if you leave home, I will send the police to pick you up. So I had to wait until I reached the age of majority, which at the time was set at 21…” Then again: «I would have been calm if I had taken the path chosen for me by my father».

But Anna, the eldest of the five children, went on stage for the first time at the age of 4. She got in with «a brown wig that covered my blond curls. I played the Madonna in the Spanish nuns’ nursery. At 8 years old, Rai came to my school for the casting of a drama, I found myself in a male role, Prince Olaf of Denmark, it was a fairy tale. Then I studied dance at the Rome Opera school. Dad didn’t realize that, for me, it was the beginning of a great thing.”

Difficult adolescence

But her father decided otherwise for her. «He took me away after two years. He forced me to go to classical high school. He saw me as a future university professor of Literature. I showed my discomfort by doing poorly in school, I began to stutter in front of others.” Al Corsera says that at school «his nickname was Funerale, I said everything. I didn’t talk to anyone and I was always reading.” He says that «at home one argument after another. Conservative dad, me left-wing. I gained my first freedom on a trip to London, the pretext was to learn English. I spent two crazy months. It was 1968. Back in Rome, I was no longer at ease with everything that revolved around me. So at 21 I left and dad took it badly…”. So much so that she was “banned”: “I couldn’t go and visit them anymore”

He went to the home of intellectuals in Ciociaria. «He came out with the rolled up mattress, a pan for cooking, a bag full of spare underwear, my inseparable white sheepskin jacket and 10 thousand lire that I had saved».

Free love

Then he talks about love. «After ’68 everyone talked about free love, I liked making love. The boys were free in words, then they protested: “But couldn’t you just be mine?”. “But how – I replied – didn’t we say free love?”» She lived in a bombed house in Rome with five men. “To make a living we developed other people’s scripts.”

The husbands

I started acting in a cooperative, then at 24 she followed a friend of hers to Canada.

She worked as an entertainer on TV programs for Italians living in Toronto. But he wanted to act so he went to New York and “soon I met John.” Her great love, her first husband. «The right man at the wrong time; instead Philippe, her second husband, French, was the wrong man at the right time. John was an aspiring director but above all, in life, a first-rate nihilist, he said it was right to be desperate because the world sucked.”

In New York I go to the Actors Studio. «Many people say they frequented him. I am the only Italian life member, together with Francesca De Sapio.”

Anna Galiena also talks to the historic newspaper on Via Solferino about her return to Italy after years of success on Broadway. «In ’84 I decided to return to Italy. I was becoming like Americans who only think about careers and money and don’t know how to live. Except that the producers didn’t look at the CV but at the legs. For a miniseries, Here Comes the Judge, I learned that at Rai they commented: but why did we take this one if it doesn’t have anyone behind it to recommend it? Director Giulio Questo held firm. I didn’t even know auteur cinema, I worked in commercial films. Until Leconte arrived in Paris for The Hairdresser’s Husband, small, peppery, funny, intelligent.”

Then suddenly he disappeared. Simply because, he confesses again to Corsera: «I had less desire to appear, I had to find myself, I didn’t recognize myself in the image of a sexy, aggressive, self-confident woman». To work in the theater he took five years off his age: «It was suggested to me to say so. Everyone said that after 40 it was difficult for an actress to find work. And I achieved success at the age of 40. I’ll be 76 at the end of December. And I’ve never worked so hard.”