“After love, the man sleeps, while the woman reflects”
This is one of several insightful quotations attributed to Italian actress and model Monica Bellucci. Monica was born in 1964 in Citta di Castello, Umbria, right in the center of Italy. While attending the University of Perugia, located in the capital of Umbria, Monica began taking on modeling assignments to help pay for her schooling.
Soon her side job began to accelerate faster than her studies; she left college and moved to Milan in 1988 and signed with her first and current agency Elite model management. Monica started getting attention for her work on both sides of the Atlantic, her images were featured in Dolce & Gabbana, Men’s health, Maxim and French Elle.
Then, with some minor television roles in 1990, her modeling career transitioned into a more successful one in acting. “In 10 years I’ve done so many things. In the beginning I didn’t know if I was still a model, if I was an actress. I knew I wanted to be an actress, but it was so difficult to be believed. Now things are going better and better and the proposals I have are much more interesting than five years ago. It’s like getting older is getting better”, she told one interviewer. Movie credits include L’Appartement, Malena, Brotherhood of the Wolf, Irreversible, Tears of the Sun, The Matrix Reloaded, The Passion of the Christ, The Brothers Grimm, Don’t Look Back, and the Sorcerer’s Apprentice.
Upon mentioning Monica to an associate, he gasped. After calming my friend down I asked him what was the cause of his strong reaction to my mention of such a beautiful woman. “It is because of Irreversible. I sat in the theater and watched her in a horrible, graphic rape scene that lasted eleven minutes….” Indeed, “Irreversible” is a film so violent and cruel that most have found it unwatchable. It won the Stockholm International Film Festival award for best picture.” The final scene is presented in the beginning, and is an eleven minute long torturous public park rape scene…
Monica made this comment about the film to another reporter: “I’m not scared by nudity, because for me, nothing is more beautiful than a body. You can have such an amazing emotion from a body. In Irreversible (2002), I treated my body like it was an object and it’s great when you can have this kind of relation with your body, it’s a part of your job, an object you can work with. When you can have this kind of freedom it’s the moment where you can give your best as an actress”.
