Ornella Muti becomes 70: her life away from the ramp light

In the Netflix series “Sex Education” she just put a young man with a film appearance so excited that he had to leave the cinema. And now she is considered the “most beautiful grandmother in the world”. This is probably also the course of things for Ornella Muti: the Italian turns 70 on March 9th.

Like her legendary colleagues and predecessors Sophia Loren (90), Gina Lollobrigida (1927-2023) and Claudia Cardinale (86), she is a unique, high-erotic trademark of Italian film, whose female stars were/are not only worshiped by the male audience and goddesses.

Anyone who asks about Italian film -Dives is guaranteed to receive the names Sophia, Gina, Claudia – and Ornella, if only in fourth place, it is by far the youngest of these women, who – according to Wikipedia – are considered “incarnation of dolce vita and amore”.

Anyone who speaks to her today prefers to talk to her about her three grandchildren, about meditation and life in the country, but hardly about films and amore. In this world beyond the set, she is still Francesca. This is how she wants to be addressed, because this is how it is called: Francesca Rivelli. Ornella Muti is her artist name, which her first director Damiano Damiani (1922-2013) came because there was an actress who was called Rivelli.

Then she was 15 years old and was discovered by Damiani for the film “Right and Passion”. It was also Damiani who hit her knees with a wood while filming so that she cried in a scene. As a “nightmare”, she drew this time as a young actress in an interview with the newspaper “Corriere della Sera”. “I was loved by cynical, dry directors … and I lived like in Disneyworld, I understood little, I didn’t know anything, I was a nobody.”

Before that, the Roman native had worked as a model for photo novels, then came the film. Because she had no acting training, she was synchronized by other actresses until 1980. That didn’t harm her film career. She stood with stars like Jeremy Irons, Alain Delon, Gérard Depardieu, Burt Reynolds in front of the camera, with Adriano Celentano, Ugo Tognazzi and Marcella Mastroianni, John Malkovich and Javier Bardem, worked everywhere in Europe and also in Hollywood.

She made it to the 100 films, a lot of mainstream, but also demanding works such as “Chronicle of the announced death”, she worked with renowned directors such as Volker Schlöndorff, Peter Greenaway, Woody Allen, James Toback and John Landis, but she could not establish herself in the USA.

With the most successful, the two turbulent comedies were “the tamed stubborn” and “Give the monkey sugar” on the side of Adriano Celentano (87). 30 years later, he revealed that the two were also a secret lovers in real life, because Celentano had been married since 1964 and was seen in public as a more or less happy father.

Anyone who knows what would have become of her would not have rejected the female leading role for “in a fatal mission” alongside Roger Moore as James Bond in 1981 because her costume designer Wayne Finkelman was not hired. “When I love someone, I am ready to do everything for a friend, even to do without 007,” she later told the “Corriere della Sera”.

Ornella Muti and love – it should be the topic of her life. She once posted on Facebook: “Love is the most important thing in life. Every kind of love. About the world, the children or love for and from his own husband.” But for her reputation as an irresistible sex icon, which even had her breasts insured for $ 350,000 in 1999, the list of her men is surprisingly manageable.

She already got her first daughter Naike at 19, she didn’t want to reveal her father. “Naike is one of the greatest gifts that gave me life.” This was followed by two marriages, the first from 1975 to 1981 with colleague Alessio Orano, the second from 1988 to 1996 with the entrepreneur Federico Fachinetti, from whom she received daughter Carolina and son Andrea.

Then came the cosmetic surgeon Stefano Piccolo, with whom she was together for ten years. In 2008 Piccolo separated from her with the claim: “There was no place in her life.” Ornella saw it completely differently: “Stefano was my life. When it was over, I thought: that’s the end.” Half a year later she presented a new man at her side while visiting a Zurich art gallery, the ten-year-old French-Italian businessman Fabrice Kerhervé, who was still married. No matter, she was “totally in love”, she was “fantastic” again: “I didn’t understand why I lost my great love months ago, and now I have found a new partner that suits me much better.”

Again this relationship was over ten years later, and she said sobered that she did not know if she would ever have a relationship again. “First I have to understand: what is love? The films don’t exist. So why become a mental slave again, the base mat of a man? I am not concerned with machotum and feminism, but that as a woman I love my three children, my three grandchildren and my friends and like to see them happy.”

She had her last big appearance at the Opera Ball in Vienna in 2020. The building contractor Richard “Mörtel” Lugner (1932-2024) asked her in his lodge. She was the eye-catcher of the ball, and Lugner was even able to talk to her in German, because Ornella Muti learned the language as a child from her Estonian-German mother, the sculptor Ilse Renate Krause. She even attended the German school as a child in Rome. However, she refused the waltz to “mortar”, because: “I never dance!”

From the mother, who died in 2020 at the age of 91, she obviously inherited an affinity to the east. At times she had a place of residence in Moscow and also played with the idea of ​​accepting Russian citizenship.

She escaped the hustle and bustle of Rome, she lives in a small town in Piedmont, in a former monastery, with her daughter Naike and her grandchildren. She takes care of her shares and real estate, because Ornella Muti is considered a clever business woman who has increased her self -deserved assets to supposedly 200 million euros.

Of course, she too has grown older. She often wears dark horn glasses, but this increases the eyes of her incredibly green cat eyes. From this look it says that she can still play the men into the land of daydreams.

But does she still want that? Since Fabrice Kerhervé went, she has lived without a man – and she is doing dazzling. In an interview, she said last November: “I am single, and that’s better. It is enough to be great with work, children, grandchildren. Today I would have to find a really special man to do without my freedom. A partner who can accept that I live my life in the service of my big, exhausting, but wonderful family. And if he doesn’t come, I am not so happy.”