Actress in films such as General della Rovere and 8 1/2, muse of Federico Fellini, feminist icon, four husbands, three children, Sandra Milo has just turned ninety and remains a point of reference for women and girls. Because today more than ever, this type of femininity, seemingly carefree, never pathetic at bottom, very brave, represents an example of strength, a condition to reclaim your space. Here’s what Sandra Milo teaches girls: Be free, don’t be afraid. Not even from death. “One day I’ll die too,” he says.
The biggest fear?
«It had no time to arrive when it immediately disappeared. As a child, in the midst of bombings and violence, the possibility of dying was commonplace: one could not be afraid».
Minor fears?
“The personal, as a young man: not making it, not finding myself, if, in short, you don’t know who you are and get involved in trial and error”.
Empty tries?
«I tried every time to think about the origin of the insecurity».
Found?
“Sometimes after many years.”
A late discovery?
“The futility of guilt”.
«I AM 90 YEARS OLD BUT I AM NOT AFRAID OF DYING, ONE DAY I WILL BE. AS A CHILD I GROW UP UNDER BOMBS, DEATH WAS ALWAYS NEAR»
Sandra Milo’s fault?
“For my mother.”
That means?
“I’ve always lived with my grandmother and my mother, I brought them to live with the first husband and with the second husband.”
Ground?
“Maternal instinct. The maternal instinct is for the little ones and the big ones”.
Mother and grandmother at home.
«Tuscan, big tongue, they were quite bulky. Her first husband, Ergas, told me: “It’s either me or her”».
Answer?
“‘I can’t leave her.’ To which he would go, stay away a month and come back».
Did you take care of grandma and mother until the end?
«You died with me, my grandmother at the age of 85. My mother at 55. She had cancer which left her paralyzed in bed, she could only move her hands. I was pregnant with Deborah and played 8e1/2 . I worked during the day, I was with her at night. I came back from the set and gave her leg massages to ease the pain ».
«FELLINI? AFTER 17 YEARS IT’S OVER, HE WANTED TO WALK WITH ME BUT I SAID NO. I WAS AFRAID THAT HE WILL HAVE REGRET AND THAT LOVE WILL BE RUINED»
was it over
“For a while, then it started again, then she asked me, ‘Help me die’. I didn’t want to, I tried to convince her, I explained to her that they could have arrested me.”
Once.
“In the face of so much suffering, I took heart.”
do you remember this moment
“I squeezed her hand, I didn’t want her to feel alone. But she says: “Go out, your love won’t let me go”».
With her father at war, the family was female for a long time: she, her sister, mother and grandmother. A childhood memory?
«Expelled to a Tuscan village, Ruota, we had nothing, really nothing, not even anything to eat. Downstream was this field of ripe wheat that nobody had harvested because it had been undermined by the Germans. Suddenly my mother and two other mothers of children decide to leave. They take scissors, bags and go».
you little girl
“I was eight, I knew they might not go back.” How did he know? “At home they spoke openly about it. Back then, children talked about death. So I slip under the covers. I close my eyes tight.”
AND?
“My mother is coming back. Come back with big sacks full of ears».
When will Sandra Milo realize she’s beautiful?
“Even as a child I knew that I would be liked. When I was thirteen, American soldiers gave me chocolate and biscuits.”
The American?
“I’m engaged to an American who owned a Harley Davidson, a motorcycle that no one had ever seen in Italy.”
So?
«We lived in Viareggio, always very poor, like many other families around us, in the building, in the neighborhood. Mom, who was watching me from the window when I got on this big motorbike, had an idea: steal the motorbike».
At this point?
“You and the neighbor come to me to ask to let the soldier in the house to keep him busy.”
Does it obey?
“I’ll let him in, turn on the music while Mom and the neighbor push the bike away.”
evening ended?
“As soon as the American gets out and sees that the bike is gone, he calls the police, the military police, who look everywhere for the bike.”
Found?
“You hid it well.”
How do you get rid of them?
“When nobody was looking for it anymore, my mother and the neighbor took it back and sold it on the black market.”
Any other memories from that time?
“Many of the women had children with black soldiers. Some had been raped, others had starved themselves. In those days, the children who were born would bleach their hair in the hope that when they returned from the war, their husbands would not notice that they were not their children. The neighborhood was full of these beautiful children: black, with blond hair, almost white.
man’s reactions?
“There was a lot of understanding.”
When she was fifteen, Sandra married Milo.
“I’ll get pregnant, but I’ll lose the baby at seven months. I’m going back to my mother. I feel bad for a long time, I can’t get out of bed. They give me morphine. Then, one spring day, I get up and ask my grandmother to make me a dress. She pulls down a curtain of the house to sew my dress with it».
AND?
«Here, on this day: I go out in my dress, and on the street everyone turns to me. That’s when I realize I’m beautiful. And I understand that I have returned to life and that I still have a lot to do ».
Was Sandra Milo born on this day?
“That and other days.”
From Viareggio to Milan.
‘I’m engaged to an older boy, he’s thirty years old, I’m sixteen. He takes me to Milan where I work as a model. Later I moved to Rome to become an actress. I was a minor, I did everything that couldn’t be done, to be with a big man, to drive a car. I was happy. I wanted to live.”
Federico Fellini.
«In Rome, together with my second husband Ergas, I meet Federico and Giulietta. we are dating They invite us to dinner, we them. We give each other presents. Juliet gives me a crystal lamp that I still have. I’m giving them a tree for their wedding anniversary. Little men bring it from Pistoia on purpose and plant it in his garden in Fregene. There was a moment when all the partygoers looked at the tree.’
Watching the tree plant, thoughts of Sandra Milo?
“I asked myself: On the day that will be very high, where will my love be?”
Has the tree grown?
«Federico and Giulietta changed two houses in Fregene. And none of us saw the tree again.’
love instead?
«I immediately fall in love with Federico, he doesn’t».
First kiss?
«In Cinecittà, in a dressing room. He kisses me and I pass out. He says: “What a big baby, someone like you, to faint for a kiss”».
And you?
«Tell him that I had many kisses, many even empty ones, and that the emotion was for him».
Doesn’t he say that?
“I didn’t have the courage to face him. I kept many things inside me ».
For example?
“We’ve never slept together in seventeen years. We met during the day, usually in his studio. In the various studios he changed, there was always an empty room with curtains on the windows and a carpeted floor. And I thought it would be nice if there was a bed if it was a room. I made him understand a little: “A bed would be good here,” I once said».
Consequence?
“The room remained empty.”
The end?
“The end of the story was not the end of feelings. After seventeen years of secret love, he proposes that I leave everything and we both go to America».
Ground?
“Let him regret it later. The terror that our love might be ruined. I imagined: If he looks at me at home one day, he says “You’ve gained weight” or “You’re spending too much”. I could not bear it.”
Give him up to not waste love?
“As much as I say that was the reason, I’ve been saying it for years, I now understand that there was something else underneath, an instinct for revenge, a little revenge.”
I AM A SIN BUT GOD MADE ME A MIRACLE. AZZURRA, MY DAUGHTER DIED IMMEDIATELY AFTER HER BIRTH. A nun managed to revive her»
do you repent
“Maybe he asked me for help as an artist, he needed a new life to write new things and I didn’t help him”.
Meanwhile, in these seventeen years?
“First there was the fight for my daughter.”
With the meaning of?
«When Debora was born, I didn’t have an annulment from my first husband. On the birth certificate she is the daughter of Moris Ergas and “a mother who does not want to be named”.
How much did it hurt?
“Even though the little girl was with me, with me every moment, in my arms, this ‘mother who does not want to be named’ stayed in my head.”
The end of the marriage with Ergas?
“One day he comes to the set in my trailer and hits me. He knocks me down and kicks me. Broken nose, broken jaw, ears – on the one hand I completely lost my hearing, on the other hand I partially regained it, but that was still enough for me in life, I managed».
who finds it
“Someone from production. They find me on the floor covered in blood and take me to the clinic. However, they could not admit me to the clinic, they had to make sure that there were no fractures in the skull. So secretly, wrapped up, they take me to the emergency room. They let me walk through the dungeons so nobody sees me. On the X-ray we can see that the skull is intact, so they’re taking me back to the clinic where they’re hospitalizing me for a couple of weeks.”
This weeks.
“I remember instructing the clinic to ask for a nightgown at home. Ergas didn’t send it. The nuns gave it to me.’
The next time?
“Ergas makes my daughter disappear. I’ll do anything to get her back. I crossed the Sinai desert. Then the lawsuits, 44 lawsuits to get my daughter back ».
Who is Sandra Milo?
“Religiously a sinner. According to the law, a person is criminal. But God performed the miracle for me. I often think to myself: God did the miracle for me”.
The wonder?
«My daughter Azzurra was born at the age of seven months. She was born alive and died instantly. They declare her dead. They encase this tiny creature, I remember it well. Then a nun comes, Sister Costantina, who asks the professor to give her the child, he chases her away, she stays until the professor gives her to her».
At that time?
«In one room, Sister Costantina practices mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, cardiac massage. And pray. Pray to Mother Maria Pia Mastena. Pray, pray, but the little girl is frightened, she cries».
That after?
“Azzurra is in the hospital for three months. I visit it every day: very small over there, in the incubator».
Finally?
«After three months I can’t take it anymore, I yell at the doctors who have to give it to me. It weighed a kilo and seven. A good doctor understands that it was my turn. you give it to me I never broke up with her for a year. Over time I watched her, I was afraid that she wasn’t going, that something was wrong with her».
Instead of this?
«Sister Costantina tells me: “Don’t worry, God has done the miracle entirely for you”».
An exciting moment in Azzurra’s growth?
“The first steps. These were not just steps, they meant much more ».
The Full Length Miracle?
“I can’t say it was a miracle. There was a commission that took care of it. In 2005 the beatification of Mother Mastena took place in the Vatican, the nuns of the order traveled from all over the world. Azzurra was in the front row».
Sandra Milo?
“I sin on the sidelines, on one side”. Do you feel like a sinner? “First of all, I don’t believe in hell.” beyond death? “There is heaven. I see myself there.” Reason? “I was trying to do my best.”
AND?
“Sometimes I succeeded.”
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