It takes longer for foreign-born actors to get recognition in the U.S., particularly if they don’t make American movies. Many good “art” films are not widely shown if they don’t boast internationally-known stars, or are not made by prestigious directors such as Fellini, Truffaut, or Bergman.
For decades, the distribution of those movies depended to a large extent on getting favorable reviews by major critics in New York and Los Angeles, who served as sort of gatekeepers.
This is one of the reasons why foreign players and foreign directors, particularly men, tend to be older than their American counterparts by the time they earn nominations.
Marcello Mastroianni
Marcello Mastroianni was not only one of the world’s most distinguished actors but also one of the few to be extremely popular outside of his native Italy. He was one of the world’s most iconic male performers of the 20th century.
He played leading roles for many of Italy’s top directors in a career spanning 147 films between 1939 and 1996,.
During those years, garnered many international honors including two BAFTA Awards, two Best Actor awards at the Venice and Cannes film festivals, and three Oscar Award nominations.
Mastroianni made his screen debut in 1949, at the age of twenty-five, after studying acting and acquiring stage experience with Luchino Visconti’ s theatrical troupe.
In the 1950s, he achieved stature in Italy, but he attained international stardom in 1960, as a result of his starring role in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita.
Two years later, he appeared in another Fellini masterpiece, 81/2, which was even more commercially successful than La Dolce Vita.
Mastroianni failed to be nominated for either of these performances, even though these movies were nominated–and even won–other awards.
Mastroianni earned his first Best Actor nomination in 1962, at age thirty-eight, for the Italian comedy, Divorce–Italian Style, in which he excelled as the bored Sicilian baron who plans to get rid of his nagging wife.
Mastroianni would probably not have received the nomination were it not for the publicity and awards that Divorce–Italian Style received from the Cannes Film Festival.
In 1987, Mastroianni garnered a third Best Actor nomination for Nikita Mikhalkov’s Dark Eyes, in which he was perfectly cast as an aging womanizer recalling his affair with a young Russian woman.
Born in the province of Frosinone and raised in Turin and Rome, Mastroianni made his film debut in 1939 at the age of 14, but he did not seriously pursue acting until the 1950s, when he made his critical and commercial breakthrough in the caper comedy Big Deal on Madonna Street (1959).
He became an international celebrity through his collaborations with director Federico Fellini, first as a disillusioned tabloid columnist in La Dolce Vita (1960), then as a creatively-stifled filmmaker in 8½ (1963).
Excelling in both dramatic and comedic roles, he formed a notable on-screen duo with actress and sex symbol Sophia Loren, co-starring with her in eight films between 1954 and 1994.
Despite international acclaim, Mastroianni largely shunned Hollywood, and remained a quintessentially Italian thespian for the majority of his career.
Nonetheless, he was the first actor to receive an Academy Award nomination for a non-English language performance, and was nominated for Best Actor three times – Divorce Italian Style (1961), A Special Day (1977), and Dark Eyes (1987).
He was one of only three actors–the others being Jack Lemmon and Dean Stockwell–to win the prestigious Cannes Film Fest Award for Best Actor twice.
Foreign Artists at the Oscars
Foreign players who work in the United States tend to be older than their American colleagues, because they first have to excel in their own countries before being brought to Hollywood.
Hence, Anna Magnani and Maggie Smith, both respected and established in their native countries (Italy and U.K., respectively), were older than American actresses when they won the Oscar.
American and foreign players make their debuts at more or less the same age, with women (both foreign and American) being younger than men, when they are first nominated as well as when they first win the Oscar. The gap between American and foreign players is wider in the men’s careers. American actors win the Oscar at the average age of thirty-seven, whereas the foreigners at forty-four
