A list of Hollywood stars who speak awesome Italian or are such great actors that managed to speak it very well on stage.

Some Hollywood actors speak (or spoke) Italian very well, others tried to speak a credible Italian but simply couldn’t. Some others, learned Italian only for acting properly, with astonishing results.

Vincent Cassel

 

We are sure that 14 years of marriage with actress Monica Bellucci helped Vincent Cassel with his Italian. He speaks quite flawlessly,  with a slight French accent, but he’s definitely very fluent. Being French is of course a great advantage for learning Italian or other Romance languages. Cassel loves Brazil and he’s also proficient in Portuguese.

Christoph Waltz

 

Unforgettable performance in Inglorious Basterds. An Austrian-born actor, Waltz is of course a native German speaker, and he’s fluent in English and French. Listening to this performance alone, it would be easy to assume he’s fluent in Italian too, but actually he admitted he’s not. He learned a few lines for the movie and that’s it. I’m sure though he would learn very quickly. Great accent, fluency and intonation, he fooled me.

 

Colin Firth

 

This versatile English actor, good on stage and on the big screen, married Livia Giuggioli in 1997 , an Italian producer and director. They live in London and Italy and have two sons with Italian names, Luca and Matteo. He started to learn Italian when he and Giuggioli began to date and he now is fluent. He has a house in Siena and spends as much time as he can in Italy. In this recent message, he shows advanced Italian skills mixed with a great British accent.

Audrey Hepburn

 

The tribute here is a must. Hepburn was a polyglot, fluent in Dutch, French, Spanish and Italian. in 1968 she married an Italian doctor, Andrea Dotti. The legendary Vacanze Romane, the unforgettable movie with Gregory Peck, made Italy even more famous and desirable than it was already, a romantic destination for millions people. In this interview, she displays a near-native knowledge of Italian an elegant syntax and a very good pronunciation. A real charm.

Jodie Foster

Jodie Foster is fluent in French, Spanish and Italian. In this quick interaction with an Italian journalist, Jodie speaks naturally and complains about her French accent, which is hardly noticeable. I wasn’t expecting that, it was a nice find. She speaks naturally. Beautiful smile…

Viggo Mortensen

It’s well known that Viggo Mortensen speaks 7 languages and Italian too. He uses sophisticated vocabulary and describes his beautiful movie Green Book with all the nuances of a native Italian speaker. Intelligent, charming, polyglot. One of my favourite actors. Bravo.

Penelope Cruz

Surprisingly, there are not many Spanish actors fluent in Italian, even though our Spaniard cousins speak a nearly identical language. Penelope Cruz is an exception. Her Spanish accent is beautiful and she tries to find appropriate words when she talks about her childhood. Brava e Bella.

Robert De Niro

When I heard Robert De Niro speaking fluent Sicilian as a young Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II, I was shocked. I am a native speaker and I found his Sicilian very convincing. Of course he has an American accent, but he was clearly understanding what he was saying, as opposed to Al Pacino in the same movie, who instead didn’t seem comfortable in speaking broken Italian. De Niro is a living legend in Italy, he’s not only considered a great actor, but also a great Italian. But is he really Italian? Well, he holds a double passport, but I wanted to know if he learned Sicilian at home as a kid. Then I learned that he’s of Irish and Italian origin and learned some Italian only as an adult. Amazing.

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Alla prossima!

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