of the credited screenwriters. She received her first screen credit in Lattuada's Without Pity (Senza pietà, 1948), which was an adaptation co-written by Fellini, and played opposite John Kitzmiller. She starred with Anthony Quinn in Fellini's La Strada (1954), playing the abused stooge of Quinn's travelling circus strongman. She won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival for her portrayal of the title role in Fellini's Nights of Cabiria (1957). She played a prostitute who endures life's tragedies and disappointments with both innocence and resilience of biblical proportions. The movie received the Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film. In a 1998 New York Times review, Janet Maslin wrote that there is more "grace and courage" in Masina's performance than "all the fire-breathing blockbusters Hollywood has to offer." Masina's career was damaged by the critical and box office failure of The High Life (1960) directed by Julien Duvivier. Subsequently, she became dedicated almost entirely to her personal life and marriage. Nonetheless, she again worked with Fellini in Juliet of the Spirits (1965), which earned both the New York Film Critics award (1965) and the Golden Globe award (1966) for Best Foreign Language Film. Roger Ebert stated that "Fellini lore has it that the master made "Juliet Of The Spirits" as a gift to his wife." Masina performed in The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969), her first film in English, which also starred Katharine Hepburn. After almost two decades, during which she worked sporadically only in television, Masina appeared in Fellini's Ginger and Fred (1986) with Marcello Mastroianni in which the leads play Italian impersonators of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers reuniting for a television special. She then rejected outside offers to attend to her husband's precarious health. Her last film was Jean-Louis Bertucelli's A Day to Remember (1991). In the late 1960s, Masina hosted a popular radio show, Lettere aperte, in which she addressed correspondence from her listeners. The letters were eventually published in a book. From the 1970s on, she appeared on television. Two performances, in Eleonora (1973) and Camilla (1976), respectively, were particularly acclaimed. Death Masina died from lung cancer on 23 March 1994 at age 73, five months after her husband's death on 31 October 1993. For her funeral, she requested that trumpeter Mauro Maur play "La Strada" by Nino Rota, a poignant leitmotif from the film. She and Fellini are buried together at Rimini cemetery in