After his movie Vita è bella, La (1997) received seven Academy Award nominations, he met the italian president Oscar L. Scalfaro and, after shaking his hand, said "Now I have the Oscar in my hand!" On the day the "L'Ulivo" party won the elections, Benigni jumped on the stage and kissed Veltroni, one of the party components. Father: Luigi Benigni, farmer, carpenter, bricklayer, b. 1918, prisoner in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp 1943-1945. Roberto used his father's stories as the basis for his film Vita è bella, La (1997). Mother: Isolina Benigni (fabric inspector), born 1918. Sister: Bruna Benigni (textile worker), born 1945. Sister: Albertina Benigni (flower shop owner), born 1947. Sister: Anna Benigni (teacher's aide), born 1948. Education: Seminary in Florence, planning to become a priest. Dropped out when flood damaged school. Accounting school in Prato, Italia. He and Laurence Olivier are the only two actors to have directed themselves in Oscar winning performances. The first actor to win a Best Actor Oscar for a non-English speaking role. He is the sixth actor in history to win the Oscar for Best Actor in a comedy after Clark Gable in It Happened One Night (1934), James Stewart in The Philadelphia Story (1940), Lee Marvin in Cat Ballou (1965),Richard Dreyfuss in The Goodbye Girl (1977) and Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets (1997). Benigni met wife Nicoletta Braschi on the set of Tu mi turbi (1983). The first actor to win a Worst Actor Razzie for a non-English speaking role. He joins Sylvester Stallone, Prince, Kevin Costner, William Shatner, and Tom Green as being the only actors to direct themselves in performances that would "win" them a Razzie Award for Worst Actor. When he "won" the 2003 Razzie Award for Worst Actor in Pinocchio (2002), Razzies.com declared his win "By a Nose!", as he'd just barely beaten fellow nominee Steven Seagal in the film Half Past Dead (2002) by a mere few votes. Federico Fellini considered him a genius Member of the jury at the Berlin International Film Festival 1990 Has his look-alike puppet in the French show "Guignols de l'info, Les" (1988).
