Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film
Meanwhile, child actors in a number of international
films after the war were becoming well known, even if
they did not enjoy the ongoing publicity that the
Hollywood studio system provided. Italian neorealist
films, for instance, utilized nonprofessional child performers in films such as Roma, citta` aperta (Rome, Open
City, 1945), Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, 1948),
Germania anno zero (Germany Year Zero, 1948), and
Sciuscia` (Shoeshine, 1946), in which Franco Interlenghi
(b. 1931) made his debut and began his lengthy film
career. Another nonprofessional, Subir Bannerjee, was
extraordinary as the child protagonist in Pather Panchali
(Song of the Road, 1955), made by Indian director
Satyajit Ray (1921–1992), although he did not appear
in any notable films thereafter. Franc¸ois Truffaut (1932–
1984) was so taken with Jean-Pierre Le´aud (b. 1944),
who played the French director’s childhood doppelga¨nger
Antoine Doinel in Les Quatre cent coups (The 400 Blows,
1959), that he cast him again in four more films as the
same character growing up through the years. Andrei
Tarkovsky also found a persuasive child actor, Nikolai
Burlyayev, to play the lead in his Russian debut feature,
Ivanovo detstvo (Ivan’s Childhood, 1962), and the Swedish
director Ingmar Bergman made effective use of Jo¨rgen
Lindstro¨m in Tystnaden (The Silence, 1963). Yet most
of these films gained their recognition because of the
influence of the auteur theory in the 1960s, and few
child actors gained any lasting attention outside of US
films.
This marginalizing began to change for international
child actors starting in the 1980s, when many films about
juvenile issues reached wide audiences. Pixote (1981) was
one such example from Brazil, in which Fernando Ramos
Da Silva played the tragic title character. Oscar nominations propelled the popularity of other films like the
Swedish Mitt liv som hund (My Life as a Dog, 1985),
featuring Anton Glanzelius; the French Au revoir les
enfants (1987), starring Gaspard Manesse; the Danish
film Pelle erobreren (Pelle the Conqueror, 1987), with
Pelle Hvenegaard in the title role; and the Italian film
Cinema Paradiso (1989), in which Salvatore Cascio plays
the boyhood role of the adult protagonist. With her
impressive performance in The Piano (New Zealand,
1993), Canadian Anna Paquin (b. 1982) became the
youngest non-American ever to win an Oscar for a
supporting role. Fame came to other international child
stars thereafter, such as Sarah Polley in The Sweet
Hereafter (Canada, 1997), Juan Jose´ Ballesta in El Bola
(Spain, 2000), Jamie Bell in Billy Elliot (Great Britain,
2000), and Marina Golbahari in Osama (Afghanistan,
2003). Then in 2004, another New Zealand film made
Academy Awards history when its star, Keisha CastleHughes (b. 1990), became the first child ever nominated
for the Best Actress Oscar, after she commanded global
acclaim for her lead role in Whale Rider (2002).