Actor Marcello Mastroianni dead at 75

Paris, December 19 - Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni died this morning in Paris. He was 72 years old and had been ailing for some time. The internationally-known and loved actor died in his Paris home of pancreatic cancer. With him at the time of his death, around 06:00 this morning was his companion Anna Maria Tato'. Hurrying to his bedside when the crisis came was French actress Catherine Deneuve and their actress daughter, Chiara Mastroianni, and Italian director Marco Ferreri.

Mastroianni is also survived by Flora Clarabella the wife from whom he had long been separated, and by their daughter, Barbara who arrived at the house later this morning from Rome. It was later learned that the funeral will be held in Rome after a small private ceremony held in Paris. Meanwhile, condolence messages and testimonials began pouring in from those who knew him and his work.

Often, in his long career, Mastroianni had played the part of the Latin Lover and in a poll of Italian women in January of this year, he was judged one of the sexiest men in the over-50 age group, along with Sean Connery and Paul Newman. But the scope of his work was much larger and more all encompassing than this.

Mastroianni was born south of Rome, at Fontana Liri, on September 28, 1924. He studied architecture at the University of Rome and began acting in 1948 with the Morelli-Stoppa theatrical troupe. On stage, he appeared in ''Oreste'' by Algeri ''A Streetcar Named Desire'' by Tennessee Williams and in Shakespeare's ''As You Like It''.

But he became an international star thanks to his roles in movies such as Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958), La dolce Vita (1960), Divorce Italian Style (1961) and ''Eight And a Half'' (1963). Director Federico Fellini used him again and again, and in the following decades he appeared in Fellini films such as the City of Women (1979), Ginger and Fred (1985) and Interview (1987).

He also appeared in a number of films for television and in a musical comedy by Garinei and Giovannini entitled ''Ciao Rudy'', based on the life of Rudolph Valentino. Among the plethora of awards he received during his career was the Palme d'Or for ''Oci Ciornie'' at the Cannes film festival of 1987 and the Leone d'Oro awarded at the Venice Film Festival in 1990. When he accepted the French Legion of Honor decoration three years ago for a lustrous career which had by then spanned more than four decades, he wondered aloud if he really did have all the fine qualities that French Culture Minister Jack Lang had ascribed to him during the presentation ceremony. ''I am a charlatan, a buffoon, a liar,'' the actor said.

When Fellini died in 1993, Mastroianni pointed to the special evidence of the director's genius in Otto e mezzo (Eight and a Half). In that film, Mastroianni said he was most explicitly Fellini's alter ego in what the actor described as '' a precise depiction of a sensitive and intelligent man'' at a time when ''we expected great changes that then did not come: it is a singular X-ray of a tormented conscience, a man who would like to change himself above all and cannot do it.''

But Mastroianni felt that ''people will remember La Dolce Vita most of all: it was a film-event that was easier for the wider public to understand, and which became a cultural and social phenomenon.'' Certainly the image of him and Anita Ekberg at the Fountain of Trevi in Rome when the statuesque blonde suddenly plunges into the water to frolic, will remain a movie icon for a long time to come.

(Ansa)