Napolean Bonapart said, "There are only two forces that unite men - fear and interest." It is said Anna Magnani possessed both. Born into poverty to a teenage mother in Rome on March 7, 1908, her unwed mother, Marina Magnani, left Anna with her grandparents to be raised.

Anna, a precocious and streetwise child at the age of 7, was sent to a French convent school in Rome. She learned French, singing, guitar, and piano. At the convent, a passion for acting was cultivated while observing the nuns stage their Christmas plays.

By 15, Anna left the convent and began singing the bawdy street songs in dingy dives. Despite her rebelliousness, Anna earned a scholarship to an acting school headed by Dario Niccodemi, an Italian novelist and a playwright. She studied and performed for four years. After that experience, Anna joined a touring group earning about 25 lire, less than a dollar a day. Living in cheap boarding houses, she ate little and lived on coffee and cigarettes. Anna loved animals and adopted stray dogs. Once said, she preferred animals to humans; they were more dependable and affectionate.

An article in Life magazine reported, "Her black hair is unconfined by hat or hairpin. She habitually dresses in black, and her big strong teeth seem about to bite. Emotionally, she is never far from an eruption. Magnani has become one of the most impressive actresses since Garbo."

During Benito Mussolini's rule, Magnani boldly made rude jokes about the Italian Fascist Party.

Gradually, Anna proved her acting abilities and was given leading roles in adaptations of dramatic plays. Out of costume, Anna exhibited strange fashion habits, often appearing drab and unkempt, especially in later years. One critic noted, "She appeared as if the doorbell had rung before she finished dressing." Unfettered, Magnani would shrug her and say, "My face is what it is. If I tried to improve it, I might make it look ridiculous."

Her chance to shine came in 1929 when the production of La Sora Rose's leading lady quit the company to marry. Anna was approached to step into the role. She gave a fiery performance, which required her to weep. Her authentic tears brought the house down, getting her an ovation, and sealing her fate as an actress.

In 1933, she married a flamboyant film director, Goffredo Alessandrini. Unfortunately, he did not feel her volatile style was appropriate for the screen. In 1934, director Nunzio Malasomma gave her a role in La Cieca di Sorrento (The Blind Woman of Sorrento).

In 1940 the couple separated. Hounded by the press, Anna responded, "Why I do it? I did it for love, but I do it no more. Love is good in the beginning; then it runs down. But my [acting] work goes better with time."

In 1945, Anna achieved international fame in Rossellini's Rome, Open City, a movie that launched the Italian neorealism movement in cinema. Viewers came to adore her fierce characterization on film.

Offstage, the equally flamboyant Anna was very superstitious and claimed to be clairvoyant. She consulted astrologers, as well as believing in numerology. Despite her dramatics, Anna also excelled in comedy. After Anna and her husband separated, she was often seen in nightclubs, smoking cigars alternating moods between rage and melancholy.

She first encountered director Roberto Rossellini in 1944. The two magnetic personalities were attracted to each other, and a petulant romance followed. She was known to hurl crockery at Rossellini, who went on record to say, "She was born carrying her liver in her teeth."

Upon meeting Ingrid Bergman, the producer fell madly in love with his new star and eventually married the Swedish born actress. Anna was furious and began to make offensive threats such as "breaking every plate of spaghetti in Italy" over his head. When reporters came to interview her, she wailed, "Please, please. Leave me alone with my tragedy! "She was said to have the tone of a fishmonger. Many actresses might have yielded to fate and time. But Magnani became fiercer under challenge, and it was as if the Italian public fell more in love with her in the great scandal of the Rossellini-Bergman affair. An affair with a handsome actor, Massimo Serato, resulting in the birth of a son she named Cellino, whom she always affectionately called Luca. Serato renounced his role to be a father and abandoned them.

In 1944, there were 48 cases of polio in Rome, Luca, then 18 months developed polio devastating Anna. At a clinic in Switzerland, he received the best possible care and treatments, including muscle grafting. The boy walked with steel braces but spent much of his time in a wheelchair. To meet expenses, Anna accepted any good-paying roles, eventually earning the highest salary of any European actress.

In 1950 Tennessee Williams tried to persuade her to appear on the Broadway stage in The Rose Tattoo, but she declined, fearing that her command of English was not good enough for such a demanding role; instead, Maureen Stapleton was cast. In 1954, Paramount Pictures announced a screen version of The Rose Tattoo. This time Anna accepted the lead role Serafina Delle Rose, an anguished widow of a burly truck driver
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Premiering at the Astor Theater in New York on December 12, Anna did not attend. Instead, she returned to Rome to her beloved son the minute the film wrapped up, disappointing studio officials. "Nothing in the world could take me away from my son on Christmas," she informed them.

New York Critics Best Actress Award went to Anna, and she also received an Oscar nomination. Once again, Anna refused to partake in festivities. The announcement came to her over the phone, waking her from her sleep, her response was: "Who is this? Are you kidding? If you are, I inform you that it is in extremely bad taste, and I will get up right away to kill you wherever you are."

Magnani's last screen appearance was a cameo bit as herself in Fellini's spectacular Roma in 1972.

Paranoid about her health, Anna regularly checked her temperature. In the early 1970s her health began to fail. After checking into a hospital, pancreatic cancer was discovered. At the age of 65, on September 26, 1973, Magnani passed away. At her bedside were her beloved son Luca, and Roberto Rossellini, her former lover who had by this time become an old friend. After a somber funeral procession through her beloved Rome on streets crowded with admirers, the woman often cast in roles of a dynamic, obstinate, forceful, earthy lower-class woman embroiled in a spectrum of human emotions, was quietly laid to rest in the Rossellini family vault.