Los Angeles [US], June 25 (ANI): Veteran Italian actress Lea Massari, famous for her roles in Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura (1960), Dino Risi's A Difficult Life (1961), and Louis Malle's Murmur of the Heart (1971), has passed away. She was 91.

Massari died at her home in Rome on Monday, The Hollywood Reporter stated, citing Italian media reports.

In a decades-long career that spanned films, television, and theater, Massari played alongside the likes of Alain Delon, Jean Paul Belmondo, Michel Piccoli, and Omar Sharif. She was a critical and audience favorite, but shunned the spotlight. After retiring from acting, more than 30 years ago, she rarely appeared in public.

Born Anna Maria Massatani on June 30, 1933 -- she took the stage name Lea in honor of her fiance Leo, whom died in a tragic accident shortly before they were to be married -- her childhood was spent across Europe, as her family followed her father, an engineer, to positions in Spain, France and Switzerland.

Massatani studied architecture, working as a model to support herself, when she was introduced to the world of film by acclaimed, Oscar-winning costume designer Piero Gherardi (La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2), a family friend.

Monicelli delivered a more grounded performance as Elena, the wife of an anti-Fascist intellectual (played by Alberto Sordi) in Dino Risi's postwar classic A Difficult Life (1961), a role that earned her a special David di Donatello award, Italy's equivalent of the Oscars. Later in her career, she would again play the wife of a political dissident, in Francesco Rosi's Christ Stopped at Eboli (1978), his biopic on Carlo Levi, who Mussolini exiled to a remote village in Southern Italy. In lesser films, Massatani added a touch of class, as in Sergio Leone's debut, the forgettable swords-and-sandals picture The Colossus of Rhodes (1961), as per The Hollywood Reporter. (ANI)