Roberto Benigni

Roberto Benigni directed Life Is Beautiful and played its lead, taking the Academy's best actor award for it and nominations in the directing and original screenplay categories, while the film itself won in the foreign language category. In Jim Jarmusch's Down by Law he is the small Italian cellmate of two men jailed in Louisiana; his work is to recite riddles and rhymes in broken English and mend other people's spirits, and after the three escape they set out across the swamp. Independent Spirit put that cellmate on its male lead nomination list at the 1987 ceremony. He worked with Jarmusch again on Coffee and Cigarettes. Of the films he directed himself the catalogue holds Johnny Stecchino, Il mostro, Il piccolo diavolo, The Tiger and the Snow, and Non ci resta che piangere, co-directed with Massimo Troisi. At the Spanish film academy's 2000 ceremony Life Is Beautiful won the best European film category, an item the institution keeps under his name beside the film.