Grazia Daddario

Grazia Daddario was an Italian actress, poet and dialect theatre performer from Bari, whose late-blooming screen career carried the voice of her city into Italian cinema and television. Born in Bari on 12 July 1932, she spent her youth giving private lessons to students preparing for exams in the family building near Piazza Garibaldi before turning fully to the arts and teaching.

She made her theatre debut in 1980 in a Barese dialect comedy beside Nico Salatino in La portapannere (La portabandiera), then worked with local companies including those of Pignataro, Barbarese and Barresi. She was a close friend of actress Mariolina De Fano. Writing and poetry remained central: she composed verses for Bari, monologues for her mother, texts on the condition of women, and a Barese dialect adaptation of Aristophanes' Lysistrata. Her daughter Sara Scanni later called her a feminist without meaning to be one, noting that she was among the first Bari women to take a driving licence in the 1960s.

Film work began with Nico Cirasola's Odore di pioggia (1989). She appeared for Sergio Rubini in L'anima gemella (Soul Mate, 2002), Carlo Vanzina in Buona giornata (2012), Paolo Genovese in Sei mai stata sulla Luna? (2015), Matteo Garrone in Il racconto dei racconti (Tale of Tales, 2015), Marco Ponti in Io che amo solo te (2015), Luca Miniero, Giulio Base, Carlo Verdone in Si vive una volta sola (2021), and others. On television she worked with Damiano Damiani and Lina Wertmuller, and in 2022 appeared in two episodes of Imma Tataranni - Sostituto procuratore. She also danced in a Dolce and Gabbana make-up campaign shot in Bari Vecchia in 2017. Her last cinema role came at ninety in Sposa in rosso, filmed in Malta.

Daddario died in Bari on 18 September 2026, aged 94, after a stay in hospice. Until her final days she recited Dante's Divine Comedy from memory to doctors and nurses. Sara Scanni said that to the end she did not lose her clarity for what she loved most: culture, theatre and poetry. Family tributes remembered her as their lighthouse and most precious good. She left a body of dialect theatre, poetry and character roles that made her a voice and face of Bari across stage, screen and civic life.