Beppe Grillo
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Giuseppe Grillo, better known as Beppe Grillo (born July 21, 1948), is an Italian actor who works in theatres, movies, and television.
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[edit] Biography
Grillo was born in Savignone di Genova, Liguria.
After receiving his degree as an accountant, Grillo became a comedian by chance, improvising a monologue in an audition. Two weeks later he was discovered and launched by Italian TV presenter Pippo Baudo. He subsequently participated in the variety show Secondo Voi for two years (1977-78). Later, in 1979, he participated in Luna Park by Enzo Trapani, and Fantastico.
In the 1980s his success rose further, thanks to shows like Te la do io l'America (1982, 4 episodes) and Te lo do io il Brasile (1984, six episodes). In these shows, he narrated his experiences of his visits to The United States and Brazil, with anecdotes and witticisms about the culture, lifestyle and beauty of these places.
As a result, his popularity grew more and more, and he became the protagonist of another show developed especially for him, called Grillometro (literally, "Grillo's measuring instrument"). In 1986, he was the star of prize-winning advertisements for a brand of yogurt.
Soon after this, his performances began to be characterized by an increasing level of political satire, often expressed in such a direct way that he quickly offended a lot of Italian politicians. In 1987 during the Saturday night TV show Fantastico 7, he attacked the Italian Socialist Party and its leader Bettino Craxi, then Italy's Prime Minister. As a consequence, Grillo was effectively and silently banished from publicly owned television.
Consequently, from the beginning of the 1990s his appearances on television became rare: according to many people, the reason for this is a silent ostracism by politicians offended by his revelations about their hidden financial activities, frauds and false claims. When one of his shows was finally allowed to be broadcast by RAI, in 1993, it obtained a record share of 16 million viewers.
He currently performs in theatres in Italy and abroad, with outstanding success. Grillo's themes include energy usage, political and corporate corruption, finance, freedom of speech, child exploitation, globalization, and technology. In every performance Grillo encourages the use of Wikipedia as the future of knowledge sharing. He has an English/Italian blog site at beppegrillo.it where he writes a topic a day, and many people all over Italy send their comments (news about Wikipedia's diffusion can also be found there). According to Technorati, the blog is ranked among the 10 most visited blogs in the world.
On 1 September 2005, with contributions from the readers of his blog, Grillo bought a full page announcement in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica to demand the resignation of the Bank of Italy's (then) governor Antonio Fazio as a result of the Antonveneta banking scandal. In October 2005, Time chose him as one of the "European Heroes 2005" for his stand against corruption and financial scandals.[1].
Later, on 22 November 2005 Grillo also bought a page in The International Herald Tribune, this time pointing out that members of the Italian Parliament must not represent citizens if they have ever been convicted by the courts. [2]. His blog now contains a regularly updated list of members of the Italian Parliament who have indeed received legal convictions.
[edit] Legal problems
During his shows Grillo does not hesitate from citing by name those firms and personalities he considers corrupt. Accordingly, he has been charged several times. Nonetheless, curiously, when Italian judges were investigating the Parmalat scandal, what was then the world's largest ever corporate bankruptcy, Grillo was called as a "witness", as he had forecast the dairy conglomerate's collapse in one of his shows. He later maintained that Parmalat's financial holes were so apparent that anybody who had sight enough to see them, would see them.
[edit] Filmography
Grillo has appeared in three movies:
