Franca Bettoia: Italian actress who starred in sci-fi film The Last Man on Earth dies aged 88

Her family told the Italian news agency Adnkronos that she died in Rome. Bettoia was married to Italian actor Ugo Tognazzi — he starred in the 1978 movie La Cage aux Folles in the part played by Robin Williams in Mike Nichols’ 1996 adaptation The Birdcage — from 1972 until his death from a cerebral haemorrhage in 1990 at age 68.

In The Last Man on Earth, directed by Ubaldo Ragona and Sidney Salkow, Bettoia portrays Ruth, a woman who, with the help of Price’s Dr. Robert Morgan, is fending off the effects of a plague that has turned humans into vampiric creatures. Filmed in Rome, produced by Robert L. Lippert and distributed by American International Pictures, the movie was based on Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel Am Legend.

Born in Rome on May 14, 1936, Bettoia made her film debut in 1955 and had her breakout role as “the other woman” in Pietro Germi’s Man of Straw (1958), which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Her last film was Teste rasate (1993), in which she played the mother of her real-life son, Gianmarco Tognazzi. She is survived by her daughter, Maria Sole Tognazzi, a director, and her son, Gianmarco Tognazzi.