Luca Barbareschi

Barbareschi was born on 28 July 1956 in Montevideo, Uruguay, to Francesco Saverio, an engineer and former World War II partisan from Milan, and Maria Antonietta Hirsch, an economist of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. His parents divorced when he was six and he moved to Milan, where he attended the Leo XIII Institute during the 1960s. In 2008, he alleged that a Jesuit priest at the Institute had sexually abused him between the ages of eight and thirteen.

Theater and film

Barbareschi studied acting with Alessandro Fersen and began his professional career in 1970 as an assistant director to Virginio Puecher at the Teatro di Verona. He spent a year as an assistant director at the Lyric Opera of Chicago before moving to the Metropolitan Opera in New York City under Frank Corsaro. He later enrolled in the Actors Studio, where he studied for four years. While at the Actors Studio, Barbareschi was cast as cameraman Mark Tomaso in the film Cannibal Holocaust, directed by Ruggero Deodato. The film was controversial for its graphic violence and realistic murder scenes which were initially speculated to be genuine, although contrary to rumours Deodato and the film's producers were never charged with murder. Deodato himself has claimed that the actors who portrayed the murdered characters – including Barbareschi – were contracted to stay out of the public eye for a year after the film's release. The existence of these contracts was disputed by Carl Gabriel Yorke but confirmed by Francesca Ciardi, both of whom co-starred on the film with Barbareschi.

Marriages and relationships

Barbareschi has been married twice. His first wife was Patrizia Fachini, with whom he has three daughters: Beatrice, Eleonora and Angelica. His second wife is Elena Monorchio, the daughter of former State Accountant General Andrea Monorchio; they married on June 20, 2015 and have two children: Maddalena (b. 2010) and Francesco Saverio (b. 2012). Barbareschi was previously in a seven-year-long relationship with actress Lucrezia Lante della Rovere.

Religion

Barbareschi practices Judaism.

In 2008, Barbareschi was elected to the Italian Chamber of Deputies as a member of Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right party The People of Freedom. In 2010, he joined Gianfranco Fini's new party Future and Freedom with 32 other deputies and 10 senators. He left parliament in 2013.

As a child sexual abuse survivor, Barbareschi has advocated for the protection of victims of pedophilia. He established the Luca Barbareschi Foundation for this purpose, and he worked to pass an anti-pedophilia law while serving in parliament.

On 11 June 2012, during an interview for the program Le Iene, Barbareschi attacked journalist Filippo Roma and his cameraman, and stole Roma's cellphone. He attacked Roma again two months later in Filicudi. In 2022, Barbareschi was accused of homophobia after remarking that "the homosexual mafia is the problem" during a speech on April 30 in Sutri. He later claimed the comments were taken out of context and were intended as a joke, and that he himself had had homosexual experiences. Barbareschi has defended director Roman Polanski, with whom he has worked several times as a producer, against his sexual abuse conviction, claiming the case against him is due to "political correctness".