Massimo Troisi as "Mario" in THE POSTMAN (IL POSTINO) (Miramax) Massimo Troisi starred in the title role of Michael Radford's THE POSTMAN (IL POSTINO). At a very early stage of the production, Troisi collapsed and it became obvious that he needed a heart transplant. However, the actor refused to abandon the project, insisting that he could have another operation after the film was completed. He joked that he wanted the last piece of his old heart to become part of this new film. Born on February 19, 1953 in a village near Naples, Massimo was from a working-class family of six children. After a stage debut in 1969, Troisi became a well-known regional stage actor, eventually moving to television as well as writing screenplays. In the early 1970s, he and two other friends formed a comedy group called La Smorfia which became famous after performances on national television. One of the most popular works presented by the group was Troisi's musical satire, Non si vive di solo pane (You Don't Live By Bread Alone), a work that was recalled by the title of the retrospective of Troisi's films (Massimo Troisi...Not By Bread Alone) shown at New York's Museum of Modern Art and by the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles in 1995. Troisi's career soared with the Italian box-office success of the comic work, Ricomincio da tre (I'm Starting From Three). He scripted, directed and played a leading role in the film and continued to perform all these tasks in numerous other successful films. For his perfomance in Scola's What Time Is It, Troisi received the Best Actor Award in 1989 at the Venice Film Festival. Massimo Troisi died the day after principal photography for THE POSTMAN was completed. He was only forty-one years old, and with his passing, one of Italy's great talents, too little recognized abroad, was lost. Quicktime 3.6Mb

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