Remembering Francesco Nuti: A Look Back at the Life and Career of the Late Italian Actor and Director

Francesco Nuti is no more. The 68-year-old actor and director (he was born in Florence on May 17, 1955) died yesterday at Villa Verde, the Roman clinic where he had been hospitalized for some time. This was announced by her daughter Geneva, her legal guardian since 2017, specifying that both she and her family prefer not to make statements in this moment of great pain.

Nuti, more than many other artists, was the embodiment of the saying that comedians are actually sad. He really was sad, certainly starting from the nineties when, after a more than brilliant career, he met the monster of failure, the one who can eat you without letting you go. Yet it all started with the wind in its sails: it was the end of the seventies when Francesco, who had already begun to take his first steps in the world of amateur entertainment and continued even after being hired as a worker in a textile company in Prato , joins the Giancattivi cabaret trio with Alessandro Benvenuti and Athina Cenci. The three are fun and success is immediate on TV and in the cinema (with the film West of Donald); it doesn’t last long, however, because in 1982 he leaves, choosing a solo film career. Previously only as a screenwriter and star performer of Madonna, how quiet is it tonight; Me, Clare and the Dark; e are happy, all directed by Maurizio Ponzi; then also as a director.

The debut behind the camera comes in 1985 with Casablanca, Casablanca cui followed by highly successful titles such as It’s all heaven’s fault, Bewitched, Caruso Pascoski (from a Polish father)Willy Gentlemen and I come from afar e Women in skirts. In the same period he also devoted himself to music, participating for example, in 1988, in the Sanremo Festival with the very sweet It will be for you. There is nothing to suggest that, after a few years, the downward phase will begin from which it will never recover. It was opened in 1994 by EyePinocchio, a film that Nuti manages to make with a long and troubled production but which does not even remotely achieve the hoped-for success. What’s more: it is a flop for both the public and the critics, so much so that it convinces him to return to the vein of that comedy that saw him triumph at the box office in the previous decade.

Not even this choice, however, proves successful and the three films that follow, Mr. Fifteen balls, I love Andrew e Caruso, zero in conduct they are warmly received. Thus comes the “beast”, a bad depression that leads to alcoholism and, it seems, even in a suicide attempt. Not even the leading role that, in 2005, he plays in Claudio Fragasso’s film Hit Contesta manages to get him out of the tunnel in which he ended up. A year later, the accident from which he has never recovered: on the eve of returning to the set, Nuti falls down the stairs of the house and goes into a coma due to a cranial hematoma. He was operated on urgently at the Policlinico Umberto I in Rome and, once out of the coma, transferred to the Versilia hospital in Lido di Camaiore, a highly specialized center in neuromotor rehabilitation. Next to him is Annamaria Malipiero, the woman he married in 1992 and from whom he separated in 2000, after the birth of Geneva.

In 2009 Nuti leaves the hospital and returns home. He still doesn’t speak or walk but since then, even if only on rare occasions, he shows up in public: at the Eden cinema in Prato for the presentation of the CD Cecco’s notes, created by his brother Giovanni and Marco Baracchino; on TV in broadcasts Your facts e Tonight what an evening!; at the Mandela Forum in Florence for a party for his 59th birthday organized by lifelong Tuscan friends Leonardo Pieraccioni, Carlo Conti, Giorgio Panariello and Marco Masini. In 2016 another tile: Nuti was first mistreated by the caregiver who was supposed to look after him and then, due to another fall, he was hospitalized in the Careggi hospital in Florence for a cerebral hemorrhage. The process is always the same: first the resuscitation department then the clinics for a rehabilitation which, in reality, was never completed so much so that in 2017, when she came of age, her daughter asked and obtained to become her legal guardian . It must be remembered that Francesco Nuti has received numerous awards in his career. Among the many, two David di Donatello (as leading actor for Me, Clare and the Dark e Casablanca, Casablanca) and three nominations for the same award; and a Nastro d’Argento (best leading actor for Me, Clare and the Dark) and two nominations for the same award.