Marta Flavi: «70 years? The best is yet to come “

This article is published in number 17 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until April 27, 2021

I live in a luxurious building in the center of Rome, the walls of the house are 60 to 80 centimeters thick: the wi-fi sucks. During the lockdown here we were all screaming on the balcony, but not to sing or clap, because right inside it doesn’t take. So I ask you to do the interview on a landline phone, not because I am dazed and don’t know how to use technology ». Marta Flavi overwhelms with her river of words and laughter.

He turned 70 on April 9, but you can take away at least twenty in terms of vitality, joy and physical form. If you remember it ad Marriage agency, when on Canale 5 in the 90s he met those who wanted to find love, know that it is practically identical. Thanks to an anti-wrinkle laser, to the genes of the mother “from whom I inherited wonderful legs” and above all to an infallible theory on the subject of happiness.

We used to have Marriage agency, but also Between wife and husband, The dating game. Now there are apps for dating. Usa Tinder?
«Look, I have organized myself like this: I have a network of very strong and present friends, an incredible love bank built over years. Never had a sense of loneliness. Maybe I was raised like a soldier, I always had to prove that I knew how to do things. So, even when I’m single, like today, I go out and do other things. A little bit sex no longer has the importance of before, a little bit I experience it as something linked to a love. Looking for it with an app doesn’t intrigue me. “

Are you still with the Milan notary with whom you said you were very happy?
“No, it’s over. The last was a Scottish gentleman, very distinguished, he looked like Sean Connery. But the quarantine has divided us and I who are not one who does sexting in front of a screen I have not continued any more ».

Is it one that leaves?
“I am not made for married life, and in general I am not capable of having a lasting relationship, I function better as a girlfriend, it has always happened to me”.

But Maurizio Costanzo married him.
“You know, at least once in their life someone thinks they can succeed. But I was educated in freedom, in the concept of always doing what I wanted ».

Are your brothers like you, then?
“Absolutely not. Both my brother and my sister have been married to the same person for years, and have children. ‘

So she…
«I got it from Uncle Arturo. He could not hold up and had to leave, always in love with the one who came after. Then we also had another great-uncle, who had ditched his wife and children for his driver … But that’s another story that serves to make us understand how everything was considered normal for us, personal choices were sacred. Anyway: do you want to know how it ended with the notary? ».

Tell me.
“We weren’t very well matched. Even though I come from a middle-class family, I couldn’t compete with him, from a very middle-class Milanese establishment family. So one day I was staying in this wonderful house, overlooking the Duomo. Tommy, the Filipino waiter, was nice too. Inside of me I hear a voice that makes me: yes, everything is very beautiful, but what do you have to do with it? I called the taxi and went back to Rome ».

What is that ring that he wears on his left ring finger?
«A story of other times: my mother had precious earrings, when my sister and I turned 18 she gave us one each, mounted on a ring. But it is not the only legacy he has left us ».

What else?
«My mother was absolutely beautiful, she was a friend of Visconti who asked her all her life to be an actress and she never satisfied him. She was a 1.78 meter from Veneto, the daughter of a German. I am a stage of one meter and 62, but I took the line from her. I have no cellulite ».

They give her a lot of compliments on social media.
“And also on the street. I’m next to Piazza del Popolo, a place full of small shops, and there is the butcher Annibale who sold meat to Fellini and Gassman and who every time I pass yells at me: “‘To Marta, you are the most beautiful seventy-year-old in Italy” . This is pure Rome, I love it ».

On her Instagram profile she collects photos practically only of herself: vanity?
“I started using it more during the pandemic and I was always alone.”

Taking pictures, what did you discover about Marta Flavi?
“That I like myself very much inside and out.”

She said she had her nose done as a girl: do you like it now?
«Well… After that it didn’t work much anymore and it got twisted a bit. But doing it, even if it was very difficult, made me feel so good that I never regretted it ».

Why “very difficult”?
“It cost over four million lire, at the time it was a lot for me as a 21-year-old student. So for a long time I stole the family silverware from a wardrobe, which I was selling secretly. When I reached the figure, I began to be seen by some surgeons, who took pictures of me, then I returned to the second visit and began to hesitate, uncertain. When one, at my statement that I wanted to do it to feel better, told me “the cemetery is full of people who wanted to get better”, I understood that my father’s hand was there, calling them back and telling him not to indulge me. He loved me very much and kept saying that that long, narrow nose with the hump was a distinctive feature. In the end I did it, but he didn’t want to look at me for a year ».

Other defects?
«I don’t see any. I’ve always had beautiful skin ».

Her face appears to be without a wrinkle.
“Never had facelifts or botulinum bites, I use a laser that smoothes wrinkles, it is done once a month for three months.”

Costa?
“It’s expensive, yes. But perhaps less than filler. My luck is that I never get the sun. During one of my love affairs, around the age of 30, this boy takes me to the Maldives for fifteen days. I go back to Italy, I go to the hairdresser who tells me: Marta, how white you are! There I realized that I didn’t get tanned and I would never tan again ».

How do you keep fit at 70?
«I do little gymnastics, but always. And I have only one vice, chocolate: the fridge is full of it, I always have at least two bars of chocolate in my bag. Never managed to stop, I carry them even with 50 degrees. It’s my forbidden pleasure, besides, I don’t smoke, I don’t do drugs, I don’t have orgies, I go to bed early and I don’t drink alcohol. “

On Instagram he showed a birthday toast of “non-alcoholic bubbles”, in fact.
“Fantastic isn’t it? There is this friend of mine who produces prosecco, but for the Arab markets she makes these gold and silver magnums, inside there is a kind of sparkling grape juice, so I can also drain a bottle. He has a vague idea of ​​soda. I always buy it, despite the disapproval of my Venetian roots ».

He also celebrated by announcing that he had the vaccine.
“Yes, AstraZeneca, and I haven’t had any bother. I have always believed in vaccines, I would also have done the Turkish one without authorization. I live it as a gesture of life, unfortunately I know people who have not made it ».

Has anyone you knew died of Covid?
«A friend from Milan, an engineer, 46, did the Paris-Dakar on a motorbike every year, young children. And a friend of Rome. When I got vaccinated I cried: I was thinking about them ». Pause. It does not hold back the tears. “There are two things that Covid made me understand. First of all that we really live on quicksand, everything is changeable, everything can disappear. The sense of helplessness that he gave us did not even have it when my mother died, who was ill for a long time. And then the distrust, seeing the neighbor as a hypothetical enemy who can infect you. The ruins of a war will not remain, but those of relationships ”.

Do you have a spiritual side?
«I am a believer but not observant. At 40 I realized that life, even if it is very long, is always short, because time is precious ».

Why at 40?
“Because my father had been ill, and then he recovered. There I really realized how much time we waste, behind the envious, for example. So I learned to cut out the toxic presences, and I became a woman ready to do anything to save my life. Now I just try to surround myself with strong, present people ».

Did he make all his dreams come true?
“I had a good life, albeit with great pains.”

Which?
«Between the ages of 30 and 40 I tried desperately to have a child, I feel very much a mother, my nephew Pier, who is now 26 and lives in London, calls me ‘mamma mamma’. I underwent four operations and did everything that could be done at the time, but maybe the technology was still behind. I went on, I continued to work ».

It was the 80s, when she made her debut on TV. How did it get there?
“I accompanied a friend of mine to an audition, but they took me.”

It’s the cliché of clichés!
“But it’s true. I had graduated in psychology with not too much enthusiasm, I didn’t do much. A friend of mine tells me to accompany her to this casting where they were looking for a tall brunette girl. I was small and also blonde, so I went and chatted with everyone, I was relaxed, I knew it wasn’t my day. Instead they chose me in the midst of 150 tall and blackberries ».

Did your friend get angry?
“No, but he said to me: next time, if they’re looking for a black girl, I’ll bring my aunt who looks Chinese.”

What happened then?
«I started making children’s programs for the Rusconi publisher, I launched Japanese cartoons. Then I did Green Line, a wonderful period of travel, on Thursday I found out if I was going to Stockholm or Marrakech ».

Then there was the great success of Marriage agency, how did it get there?
«We must make a premise. I didn’t want to do TV, I wanted to be in America ».

What do you mean?
“As I said before, I didn’t like studying so much, so my father sent me to Washington to learn English from a friend of his. It was a very wealthy family, he was one of President Carter’s attorneys. I went out with the Georgetown artists and I had a lot of fun, I would come back in the evening and they would tell me: this is a place for losers. There I realized how lucky I was, no one in my house valued others based on success and money. I am the daughter of a Jew, one of the first members of the Communist Party. After three months, not having the green card I still had to go back. But I had learned the language ».

What does this have to do with your television career?
“That years later I came back and studied TV a bit. There were crazy programs, I remember a teleshopping with an old woman who was in a bed and sold sheets, nightdresses. And then there was this program, Friends and pets: I thought I’d go back to Italy and propose it to some TV, get paid for the format and go back to America. I had no idea how it worked. I proposed it to Maurizio Costanzo, but he didn’t believe it. The program did not happen, but our relationship began ».

Now would you like to go back to TV with one of your programs?
«Yes, a program with children as protagonists, because they are truth and intelligence, they have a wonderful world from which you can learn. But I’ve never been ambitious, I’m happy with what I’ve done, so if it happens well, otherwise it’s fine. I am for the live and let live. The next ten years will be the best, I believe in it, we attract the energy we emit ».

Is she always so peaceful?
“If I am sad I try to analyze myself and remove all the useless parts that are not true, the thoughts created by our mind but which are not real. I do not wallow in sadness but I do not hinder it, rather I reduce it, knowing full well that tomorrow is another day ».

Where does this wisdom come from?
«I always say that as a child I drank milk and beauty. One thing that always comes from my family, which counts three deportees to Dachau: we had this sense of precariousness but also of celebrating beautiful things, albeit small. I remember my mother, when she was sick before she died, she told me she wanted a teaspoon of ice cream. The next day he wanted another one. Then he looked at me and said: but this is very good, much better than yesterday’s ».

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