Biography

The first actor to win a Best Actor Oscar for a non-English speaking role.

After his movie Life Is Beautiful (1997) received seven Academy Award nominations, he met the Italian President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro and said, after shaking his hand: "Now I have the Oscar in my hand!".

He and Laurence Olivier are the only two actors to have directed themselves in Oscar winning performances.

His father Luigi Benigni (1918-2004), who worked as a farmer, carpenter and bricklayer, was a prisoner in the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen between 1943 and 1945. Roberto used his stories as the basis for his film Life Is Beautiful (1997). However, unlike Roberto's character in the film, Roberto's father was not of Jewish heritage.

Winning the Best Foreign Language Film category at the The 70th Annual Academy Awards (1998), he famously climbed on the back of the seat for his procession to the stage and applauded the audience. The following year, while announcing the nominees for the Best Actress Award, Billy Crystal appeared behind him with a large net to restrain him.

[on winning the Best Actor Academy Award for Life Is Beautiful (1997) after already accepting the Best Foreign Language Film award as its director] "Thank you. This is a terrible mistake, because I used up all my English!"

Charlie Chaplin used his ass better than any other actor. In all his films his ass is practically the protagonist. For a comic, the ass has incredible importance.

[said backstage at the Oscars after he won the Best Actor category] "I'm so happy that every organ in my body is moving in a very bad way."

On Stanley Kubrick: Stanley Kubrick is one of the geniuses of this century.

The first movie I saw - and I don't know if it influenced me - was Ben Hur. We watched it outside in a corn field, and it ran backwards. So the first movie I ever saw was Ben Hur, backwards.