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Italian film superstar Ornella Muti says would like to get Russian citizenship

Muti purchased an apartment in Moscow in 2016

Ornella Muti Artem Geodakjan/TASS

Ornella Muti

© Artem Geodakjan/TASS

TASS, September 4. Italian and European film superstar Ornella Muti said on Monday she would like to get Russian citizenship.

"I have an apartment in Moscow and a residential license here but I don’t have a Russian passport," she said answering a question from TASS. "I certainly would like to get Russian citizenship. Why not?"

She recalled her Russian roots, saying, "My grandfather was a physician in the Czarist times and my grandmother was a pianist. Also, we had a singer in or family and, quite possibly, the Russian roots explain partly for why our family has been so artistic."

The rumors that Muti was pondering an application for Russian citizenship started circulating in 2016. Her legal representatives said then she had not filed an application yet. Muti purchased an apartment in Moscow in the same year.

Nee Francesca Romana Rivelli, the name she inherited from her Estonian mother, she appeared on the screen at the age of fourteen in 1969, when Damiano Damiani chose her for the main role in his film ‘La moglie piu bella’ [‘The Most Beautiful Wife’]. The list of her appearances in feature films and television series includes more than a hundred titles.

She scored particular success in the works by Dino Risi, Francesco Rosi and Mario Monicelli, among others. Audiences in Russia remember her for the roles in ‘Il bisbetico domato’ [‘The Taming of the Scoundrel’, 1980] where she co-starred with Adriano Celentano and Gerard Depardieu’s 1998 dramatization of ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’.

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