Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni, whose roles in more than 120 movies including "Divorce, Italian Style" and "La Dolce Vita" made him the symbol of the harried "Latin lover," died Thursday at his Paris home. He was 72.
Mastroianni, who won worldwide recognition in the early 1960s for his performance as a womanizing journalist in "La Dolce Vita," had pancreatic cancer.The actor's lawyer in Rome confirmed the death, first reported on French radio. "The news unfortunately is true," said a weeping Giovanna Cau, who has represented the actor for 40 years.
Italian state television reported that French actress Catherine Deneuve and their 24-year-old daughter, Chiara, were at his bedside when he died. Cau said Mas-troianni's daughter Barbara, by his ex-wife Flora, also was there.
"He had this huge quality about him of taking seriously what he was doing, without taking himself seriously," said director Roger Vadim. "His humor and tenderness about himself is one of the best and rarest qualities of geniuses."
Ironic, understated and always modest, Mastroianni insisted he was uncomfortable with his screen image, and he once said on American television: "I am not a sex addict."
Since his screen debut in 1947, Mastroianni starred in more than 120 films, won two best actor awards at Cannes and was nominated for three Oscars.
He played alongside Brigitte Bardot and Sophia Loren, Yves Montand and Jack Lemmon in films by top Italian directors.
Mastroianni's "Three Lives and Only One Death," in which he plays opposite Chiara, recently was released in the United States.
Mastroianni appeared weak at the Cannes Film Festival in May.
"I'm always rather annoyed when people say extraordinary things about actors," he said there. "We just do a job."
Mastroianni was born Sept. 28, 1924, in a small town near Rome. As a child, he had a sampling of stage roles at his parish church. His father, a carpenter, forced him to abandon his formal schooling at 14 and go to work.
In the late 1930s Mastroianni held odd jobs in Rome, occasionally getting small parts in movies. During World War II, while he was working as a draftsman, German soldiers carted him to a labor camp in northern Italy.
Mastroianni escaped, and lived in wartime poverty in Venice until 1945. After the war he returned to Rome where he began studying architecture and worked as a clerk with a British film distribution company during the day. He practiced acting in the evening with a group of university students.
Mastroianni's first lead film role was in an Italian production of Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables" in 1947. With "Three Girls From Rome" (1952), he came to be known abroad.
Mastroianni's performance as the intrepid Marcello in Federico Fellini's 1960 film "La Dolce Vita," marked the beginning of a long partnership with the director.