Bernardo Bertolucci, the Italian director whose films are known for their colorful visual style, was born in Parma, Italy, in 1940. He attended Rome University and became famous as a poet. He served as assistant director for Pier Paolo Pasolini in the film Accattone! and directed Commare secca, La. His second film, Before the Revolution, which was released in 1971, received an Academy Award nomination for best screenplay. Bertolucci also received an Academy Award nomination as best director for Last Tango in Paris, and the best director and best screenplay for the film The Last Emperor, which walked away with nine Academy Awards.


Brother of Giuseppe Bertolucci, cousin of Giovanni Bertolucci. Born at 7:25pm-CET Was voted the 44th Greatest Director of all time by Entertainment Weekly. The young Bertolucci took after his father, a Roman poet and film critic, and became a celebrated published poet by the age of 20. He gave up poetry for the cinema after working as an assistant to Pier Paolo Pasolini on the movie Accattone (1961). In July of 1990, along with Federico Fellini, Tonino Guerra and Marcello Mastroianni, he wrote: "With the death of Sergei Parajanov cinema lost one of its wizards.". Was a close friend of Pier Paolo Pasolini. When the Italian Bertolucci was Oscar-nominated as Best Director for The Last Emperor (1987) (and won), his Best Director fellow nominees were all non-Americans: Adrian Lyne and John Boorman (UK), Lasse Hallström (Sweden) and Norman Jewison (Canada) making that particular instance unique in Oscar history. [11 April 1988]