Bernardo Bertolucci is a film director. He is best known for directing "The Last Emperor", a film about the last Emperor of China that won nine Academy Awards and was the first movie to be filmed inside the Forbidden City.
Bernardo Bertolucci was born in Parma, Italy on March 16th, 1940. His father was a poet and film critic. As a child, Bernardo Bertolucci was most interested in writing and originally intended to become a poet like his father. He won various literary prizes during his early career, and attended the University of Rome, where he studied modern literature. While he was there, he was offered a job as an assistant director on Pier Paolo Pasolini's film "Accattone", because his father had helped Pasolini publish his first novel. Bernardo Bertolucci's interest in film grew and he left the university to direct "La commare secca" and "Prima della rivoluzione".
Over the following decades, Bernardo Bertolucci had a critically acclaimed film career, producing movies such as "Last Tango in Paris", "1900" and "The Conformist". His films tend to be mainly concerned with sex and politics. In 1987, Bernardo Bertolucci directed "The Last Emperor", which won nine Academy Awards and was the first western film created with the cooperation of the Chinese government since 1949. The movie was filmed in the Forbidden City in Beijing, and portrayed the life of the last Emperor of China as he changed from Emperor to Citizen, an analogy for the changes in Chinese culture over the last hundred years. The Academy Awards that it won were for "Best Picture", "Best Cinematography", "Best Director", "Best Costume Design", "Best Film Editing", "Best Original Score", "Best Writing", "Best Sound", and "Best Art Direction - Set Decoration". Since then, Bernardo Bertolucci has continued to produce movies, including "Stealing Beauty" in 1996 and "The Dreamers" in 2003.