Famous Italian director and filmmaker Gabriele Salvatores has revealed in an interview that he was once given just five years to live.
Now at 60 years of age, Salvatores has released a new film, Happy Family, and can safely say he has had a happy life and career since that terrible diagnosis.
In an interview with Vanity Fair Salvatores says:30 years ago, the Elfo Theatre, which was a house and family for me, was closing.
Going home from the theatre one evening, I didn’t feel very well and so the following morning I went for a medical visit and they discovered that I had a very high level of platelets in the blood.
I was 30 years old and they said I had leukemia and that I wouldn’t get to 35.
I was very worried, even if it was my parents who were really scared.
The bad news was not as bad as it seemed at the time.
Salvatores, in fact, has a rare blood disease called Polycythemia.
Now at the age of 60, Salvatores says:Even today I go for check-ups every three months, but I don’t have any problems, I just take some anti-platelet medicine.
And twice a year I complete a bloodletting, which I find quite romantic: we don’t have the leeches like in the 1800’s, but it’s an emotional thing that still lives in my imagination.
The tests are a bit boring but they teach you a lot: you go out of the hospital thinking how lucky you are.
That’s what illness teaches us – that for however bad you might feel, you’re not the centre of the world.
And so Gabriele Salvatores is still with us, and has plenty to teach us about his own life and work.
The film Happy Family, appearing after the intense and dark Come Dio Comanda from the book by Niccolo’ Ammaniti, is a comedy about two families who come together because their 15-year-old children have decided to marry.
The film stars Diego Abatantuono, Margherita Buy, Fabrizio Bentivoglio, Fabio De Luigi, Carla Signoris, Valeria Bilello, Gianmaria Biancuzzi and Alice Croci, and will be in Italian cinemas from March 26.