1999 - Roberto Benigni

At the 71st Academy Awards, Roberto Benigni became only the second person to direct himself to an acting Oscar win. the first was Laurence Olivier who achieved this feat for his performance in 1948's 'Hamlet'.

Benigni's ‘Life is Beautiful’ moved the audience deeply, for its tender yet tragic depiction of what his character, Guido Orefice, and the latter’s little son Giousè, experience after being taken to a Nazi concentration camp during the Second World Ward.

Benigni plays Guido Orefice, a Jewish Italian bookshop owner, who uses storytelling and his imagination to protect his son from the horrific reality of internment in a Nazi concentration camp.

His film was partly inspired by the book 'In the End, I Beat Hitler' by Rubino Romeo Salmonì and by Benigni's father, who spent two years in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during World War II.