Vittorio De Sica
Early life

De Sica was born on 7 July 1901 in Sora, Lazio. His father Umberto De Sica was from Giffoni Valle Piana, Campania; he was a journalist, and in the later years worked for the Bank of Italy. Teresa Manfredi, his mother, had Neapolitan origins. De Sica was baptised in the church of San Giovanni Battista in Sora under the name Vittorio Domenico Stanislao Gaetano Sorano De Sica. He had a very close relationship with his father and later dedicated to him the film Umberto D. The first interest in cinema sparked in Vittorio due to his father's occasional performances in silent movies: he filled in for the pianists. As an adult, Vittorio De Sica described their family state in his early years as 'tragic and aristocratic poverty'.

In 1914, the family moved to Naples. Upon the outbreak of the First World War, they moved to Florence. Eventually, they settled down in Rome. At the age of 15, De Sica started performing as an actor in amateur plays staged in hospitals for the recovering soldiers. He started studying to become an accountant when in 1917 through a family friend Edoardo Bencivenga he got a small part in the Alfredo De Antoni film The Clemenceau Affair.
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