Actress Lelia Goldoni, heroine of Shadows, the feature film by John Cassavetes released in 1959, died at the age of 86. She was found dead at the Actors Fund Home, a medical aid center in Engelwood, New Jersey, according to British daily The Guardian. Her manager and friend, JD Sobol, confirmed the actress died on Saturday.
Born in 1936 in New York, Lelia Goldoni began acting at the age of 19 at the Burn Lane theatre, whose workshops were directed by John Cassavetes.
His career began in the cinema in the 1940s, reports the Offshore Festival site. The actress makes a first appearance in House of strangers by Joseph Mankiewicz. In 1949, when the film was released, she also played in We were Strangers, a feature film by John Huston. She collaborates with several directors including Martin Scorsese, for Alice is no longer here, in which she plays a small role. She also plays in several feature films by John Schlesinger and Robert Mulligan.
In 1959, Cassavetes gave him his biggest role with Shadows, a docufiction about three siblings living in 1960s New York. pretend to be white. John Cassavetes, who plans to make a feature film, offers Goldoni to play the sister of the two protagonists. His character eventually becomes one of the central figures of the film. Of Italian origin, the actress is therefore presented as a black woman. This first feature film, distributed in England from 1960, launched Cassavetes’ career. For this film, Lelia Gordoni is nominated for the Baftas in the category best female hope.
During the decade that followed, she played small roles for British television before returning to live in the United States in 1973. Back in Hollywood, she was spotted by directors Mary Dove and Martin Scorsese for the films The Day of the Locust and Alice no longer live here. For this last role, she is nominated for the Baftas for the second time. In 1978, she played alongside Donald Sutherland, Jeff Goldblum and Leonard Nimoy in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a 1978 remake by Philip Kaufman.
Later, the actress becomes a director and producer for a documentary, Genius on the Wrong Coast, released in 1993. She then becomes a film professor – she teaches interpretation and script analysis – at the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute, at UCLA and Hampshire College, Massachusetts.