Italian film director and screenwriter who wrote and directed popular films that included The Seduction of Mimi (1974), Swept Away (1975) and Seven Beauties (1976).
For Seven Beauties she became the first female director to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director in 1977. In 2019, Wertmüller was announced as one of the four recipients of the Academy Honorary Award for her career. Wertmüller is the second female director ever to have been honoured with an Academy Honorary Award.
Wertmuller came from an aristocratic background with Swiss ancestry. Rebellious from youth, she was thrown out of 15 schools as a kid because of discipline problems. She began her career in 1962 as a production assistant to Federico Fellini.
She married artist-scenarist Enrico Job (born in Naples on 31 January 1934) on 24 September 1968. They were in the news in 1991 when they had a baby girl after 22 years of marriage. The press was speculating that the baby came from a surrogate mother with Job’s sperm. He died on 4 March 2008.
In 2015, Wertmüller was the subject of a biographical film directed by Valerio Ruiz titled Behind the White Glasses, in which she reflects on her life’s work.
Wertmüller continued to work as a director in the theatre until her death at her home on 9 December 2021 at the age of 93.
Link to Wikipedia biography