Italian actress Lea Massari, 91, died on June 23. She was best-known as the “Laura Palmer” figure in Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura; when cast in that, she was already a rising starlet, having a costarring role in the TV series Capitan Francassa (1958). Through the 1980s, Massari appeared in some 80 Italian and French films and TV series, acting alongside Jean Paul Belmondo, David Niven, Yves Montand, Jean Louis Trintignant, and Michel Piccoli, appearing in Louis Malle’s Murmur of the Heart, Sergio Leone's The Colossus of Rhodes, The Things of Life, and Christ Stopped at Eboli (for which she won a 1979 Nastro d'Argento award for Best Supporting Actress). Massari also acted onstage, in both dramas and musicals; her TV successes included The Brothers Karamazov and Anna Karenina. After retiring from the show business, she was active in animal-rights campaigns: “My husband and I went hunting with two friends,” she recalled. “They had taken three hares, I had nothing. At the end of the day I was so frustrated that I heard a rustle and shot on the fly without thinking. It was a baby hare that died in my arms: I still have the blood-stained jacket. Since then, I have sworn to quit hunting.” She admitted to only one career disappointment, losing Anouk Aimee’s role in Fellini’s 8-1/2 (“But in retrospect I could not blame him!”).
