Francesca Marciano

In both her personal and professional life, Francesca Marciano has displayed an admirable and enviable sense of adventure. In her late teens, the luminously beautiful Marciano was cast in Lina Wertmüller's quirky World War II drama "Seven Beauties," and then played the lead in two films by Pupi Avati, "The House of the Laughing Windows" and "Tutti defunti... tranne i morti." At 21, however, she left Italy for New York City, where she went to film school and then worked in television. In 1983, moving back to Italy, she co-wrote and co-directed "Lontano da dove," but decided she was more suited to writing movies than directing them. Since 1992, Marciano has written six comedies for Italian actor-director Carlo Verdone, the most famous being the 1996 romcom "I'm Crazy About Iris Blond." Away from her work with Verdone, she had great success penning Gabriele Salvatores' acclaimed 2003 coming of age charmer "I'm Not Scared" and Cristina Comencini's enigmatic 2005 drama "Don't Tell," which was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars. Since 1998, Marciano has also been a novelist, writing "Rules of the Wild" (set in Africa, where she has spent a lot of time), "Casa Rossa," about her native Italy, and "The End of Manners," which tells the story of two female journalists in Afghanistan. Unusually, Marciano writes her books in English and then translates them herself into Italian.