Franco Zeffirelli (12 February 1923-15 June 2019) was an Italian film director and a Forza Italia Senator from Catania from 21 April 1994 to 29 May 2001.
Biography[]
Franco Zeffirelli was born in Florence, Tuscany, Italy in 1923, a descendant of one of Leonardo da Vinci's siblings. He served in the Italian Resistance during World War II, and, after the war, he began a career in theatre and film. Zeffirelli directed film adaptations of The Taming of the Shrew in 1967 and Romeo and Juliet in 1968, as well as the miniseries Jesus of Nazareth in 1977. Zeffirelli was accused of blasphemous representation of biblical figures in his films, but he was in fact a conservative Roman Catholic who claimed that the film The Last Temptation of Christ was a product of "that Jewish cultural scum of Los Angeles which is always spoiling for a chance to attack the Christian world," supported the Roman Catholic Church's stances on abortion and homosexuality (despite coming out as "homosexual" - seeing "gay" as less elegant - in 1996), and served two terms in the Senate with the center-right Christian Democracy and Forza Italia parties. He died in Rome in 2019 at the age of 96.