Her film career never took off, even though she, the granddaughter of the Duce but also of Sophia Loren, shot films with Ettore Scola and Alberto Sordi. «After each audition the answers were: too beautiful, too ugly, too tall, too thin, eyes too clear. The real too perhaps was the surname - confesses Alessandra Mussolini, 61 years old - Dino Risi told me to my face. "You want to make movies with those eyes that remind of your grandfather? At least change your surname!"». Then she closed with the cinema, she enrolled in Letters and then in Medicine. But Alessandra's passion, daughter of Romano and Maria Scicolone, Sophia Loren's sister, was always politics.
The Family
Her family was as famous as it was turbulent. She tells it herself to Corriere della Sera. Her father Romano, a jazz musician son of Benito, cheated on her mother Maria Scicolone, daughter of the musician Romilda Villani, initially not recognized by her natural father Riccardo Scicolone, as well as Sophia Loren's sister. A family entanglement that the MEP has given a sentimental form with the book The Game of Darkness, just released by Minerva. The betrayal would publicly come back into the life of the MEP when her husband Mauro Floriani was involved in the Parioli prostitutes case. Recently Alessandra Mussolini said that such things are not forgiven. "In this book it is clearly written: betrayals in life are always there".
Sophia Loren
«My aunt was always around the world or in the fabulous villa of Marino, she lived a life to herself. She had married a man, Carlo Ponti, decidedly austere compared to us, cold, arid. However, part of the money that aunt had earned with Quo vadis she gave to my grandmother so that she could buy the surname "Scicolone" also for my mom. Riccardo Scicolone, with whom my grandmother had been a lover, had recognized Aunt Sofia, giving her his surname, but not my mom, who in fact carried the surname of grandma, Villani. They paid him to give the surname also to my mom. I never knew the exact amount but I know that it was a nice sum anyway. In any case I think I saw him twice, I didn't even know if with his family he lived in Rome or not, we never mentioned him".
The Duce
Grandfather Benito Mussolini was rarely remembered. "I attended Villa Carpegna during the holidays but my childhood and in general my life I spent them with the Scicolone branch, not with the Mussolini branch. My father never mentioned him - she says - For him there was music, he was an artist, he lived like artists. A charmer, many trips, many women, little money". My parents argued about dad's betrayals. Grandma caught them and perfidiously reported them to my mom. Mom got angry with dad. Dad did what men usually do: he denied, denied, denied".
The grandmother
The relationship between her grandmother and her mother was always stormy. "One day mom went to have gallstones operated in Geneva. We had stayed in Rome, at grandma's. At one point I go to grandma, who was arguing with her brother in the kitchen. And she, about my mom, said to my face: "I hope your mother dies under the knife". Out of anger I took a small table and threw it against the wall. With my Aunt Sophia it was different, she had made many sacrifices, helping her at the beginning of her career in the cinema. Then my mom arrived, the princely marriage with Romano Mussolini, the glossy magazines: she thought that she herself would be left with nothing. Grandma Romilda lived in anger and resentment, mom gave up everything, dad lived off music and his secret loves".
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