Erminia Manfredi

Erminia Ferrari was born in Taormina, in the province of Messina, Sicily, on 4 November 1931. Her father was a hotel manager who worked in Italy's then African colonies, and the family followed him, so she spent part of her childhood and youth in Libya and Ethiopia. Her mother was Sicilian and attached to the island's traditions. In 1950, when she was about eighteen, she moved to Rome because the family needed money. She later explained that her father had a significant debt and that she needed to work.

Details of her formal schooling have not been made public. Her real training in fashion came on the job. As a model in Roman tailoring houses and then in the atelier of Roberto Capucci, she spent long hours in the sartoria, where, in her words, she learned an infinity of important things. Journalists later described those years as a schooling of the eye: how a dress falls, how it follows a movement, and how a costume can change the impression a person makes.

From 1950 she worked as a mannequin (indossatrice) for several Roman fashion houses before joining Roberto Capucci, then one of the rising names of Italian couture. She continued modelling after her 1955 marriage until the early months of her first pregnancy, then stepped back to raise her three children.

She later returned to the entertainment world behind the camera. She is credited as assistant costume designer, under her maiden name Erminia Ferrari, on Il giocattolo (1979) directed by Giuliano Montaldo, Café Express (1980) directed by Nanni Loy, and Nudo di donna (1981) directed by Nino Manfredi, and as costume designer, as Erminia Manfredi, on Spaghetti House (1982) directed by Giulio Paradisi. Nino Manfredi starred in all four films. She also worked as a set designer. Despite her husband's repeated requests, she never accepted acting roles, preferring to stay behind the scenes.

Before meeting Nino Manfredi she was engaged to a businessman named Pasquale. The wedding was imminent when it emerged that he had taken large loans from her father and others and vanished. Rosy Bonagura, director of the Capucci house and wife of actor Gianni Bonagura, then arranged a dinner in Milan at the Don Lisander restaurant near La Scala, telling each of them that the other wanted to meet. It was not love at first sight, she said, but Nino made her laugh all evening.

They married on 14 July 1955 at San Giovanni a Porta Latina in Rome, in a dress designed for her by Capucci. They had three children: Roberta, an actress, producer and casting director; Luca, a director and screenwriter; and Giovanna. Grandchildren followed. The marriage lasted until Nino's death on 4 June 2004. She spoke openly about his infidelities and about a daughter he fathered in Bulgaria, whom he legally recognised; she travelled to Bulgaria herself to face the situation. She remained devoted to him and said years later that she still felt him with her and talked to him all the time. Her home was on the Aventine in Rome, near the Giardino degli Aranci. Her family called her Minia.

After living through her husband's eleven-month illness, she became an outspoken advocate for people with severely disabling conditions and for their carers. She criticised gaps in Italian health and social care, first on the RAI programme Report in June 2004 and in front of reporters at Rome's Nuovo Regina Margherita hospital on the day Nino died, and later as a public face of ALS charities. She described life as all that we have, and said it is a right to live it with dignity and intensity until the last moment, surrounded by the affection of loved ones. On love and suffering she once asked what happiness would be without the suffering that teaches you.

Erminia Manfredi was remembered in Italian media as the fixed point (punto fermo) of Nino Manfredi's life, the woman who, as her son Luca often said, held the family together. Obituaries also stressed her own creative work in fashion and costume, a talent the family considered central: her daughter Roberta called her the real artist of the house. As honorary president of Viva la Vita onlus she helped raise funds and awareness for people living with ALS, and she was a key witness and guardian of her husband's artistic and private story through interviews, tributes and the 2017 television film In arte Nino.

No formal state awards or film industry prizes in her own name were found in the sources reviewed. She served as honorary president of the ALS charity Viva la Vita onlus from 2006, and she took part in tributes to her husband such as the 2014 programme Nino! Omaggio a Nino Manfredi.

In 2017 RAI broadcast In arte Nino, a television film directed by her son Luca Manfredi about the early career of Nino Manfredi, in which Erminia was played by Miriam Leone and Nino by Elio Germano. That year she gave a long interview to Corriere della Sera about her broken first engagement, her wedding and her marriage. She appeared on Italian television over the years, including Tv2000 and RAI programmes such as I Fatti Vostri and Domenica In (with Luca in March 2021, for the centenary of Nino's birth), and in interviews for Viva la Vita onlus.

Erminia Ferrari Manfredi died in Rome on 2 November 2026, aged 94, two days before what would have been her 95th birthday on 4 November. Her son Luca announced the death on Facebook with a close-up photograph and the words: "Goodbye great 'Minia', wife, mother and extraordinary woman. You will always be in our hearts." Former daughter-in-law Nancy Brilli remembered her on Instagram as one of the most elegant women she had ever known. The cause of death was not made public, and funeral arrangements had not been reported at the time of writing.