Adriana Asti, a great actress of theater and cinema, died last night in her sleep in Rome at the age of 94.

She was born in Milan on April 30, 1931. She worked with the greatest, from Strehler to Visconti, from Bertolucci to Ronconi. The news of her passing was announced by the newspaper Il Foglio.

Stage name of Adelaide Aste, she made her theatre debut in 1951, acting in Plautus' Miles Gloriosus with the Bolzano theatre company , then a part in Arthur Miller's The Crucible, directed by Luchino Visconti. With Visconti, her first success at the cinema, with Rocco and His Brothers (1960).

In 1961 he took part in Pier Paolo Pasolini's Accattone, the following year in Franco Brusati's Il disordine, and in 1964 in Bernardo Bertolucci's Before the Revolution. He then worked again with Visconti in Ludwig (1972), in Luis Buñuel's Phantom of Liberty, and later acted for Mauro Bolognini (Per le antiche stair; L'eredità Ferramonti; Gran bollito).

She played the lead role in the Flaubert-esque servant Felicita in the adaptation written by Cesare Zavattini for Vittorio De Sica and later directed by Giorgio Ferrara (A Simple Heart, 1977). In 1999, she starred in David Emmer's A Nonviolent Life, and in 2001, she starred in the ensemble film How to Make a Martini, directed by Kiko Stella. She has voiced, among others, Lea Massari and Claudia Cardinale, and has also appeared in television films.

Among her latest films is The Best of Youth by Marco Tullio Giordana, who entrusted her with the role of the mother of the protagonists, the brothers played by Luigi Lo Cascio and Alessio Boni.