Giulia Anna "Giulietta" Masina (22 February 1921 – 23 March 1994) was an Italian film actress best known for her performances as Gelsomina in La Strada (1954) and Cabiria in Nights of Cabiria (1957), for which she won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival. Cinema historian Peter Bondanella described Masina's work as "masterful" and "unforgettable," and Charlie Chaplin, with whose work Masina's is often compared, called her "the actress who moved him most." Both La Strada and Nights of Cabiria won Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film and were described as having been "inspired" by Masina's "humanity." Life Giulia Anna Masina, the eldest of four children, was born in San Giorgio di Piano, near Bologna. Her father was a violinist and her mother was a schoolteacher. When Masina was four, her uncle took her to meet the Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello, who was later to win the Nobel Prize in literature. A few years later, when this uncle died, his widow, Masina's aunt, asked Masina's parents if they would allow her to come to Rome to stay with her. Masina's parents agreed, in part because they believed that in Rome Masina would have more success in the arts for which she was already demonstrating a unique talent. Masina attended an Ursuline convent school and took lessons in voice, piano, and dance. Her first experiences acting took place during World War II as part of the theater section of Rome's Gruppi Universitari Fascisti, a state-sponsored but university-student-led arts organization. She graduated with a degree in Literature from Sapienza University of Rome. She found work as a voice actress in radio during the war, which earned her more money and attention than stage acting. It was as a radio artist that Masina met Federico Fellini, a radio scriptwriter. They married in 1943, and a few months later, Masina suffered a miscarriage after falling down a flight of stairs. In 1944, she became pregnant again; Pierfederico (nicknamed Federichino) was born on 22 March 1945 but died from encephalitis 11 days later. Masina and Fellini had no other children. Career Working together with her husband, Masina made the transition to on-screen acting. Half of her Italian films, the more successful projects, were either written or directed by her husband. Masina made her film debut in an uncredited role in Rossellini's Paisà (1946), Fellini being one