Behind the diva’s enchanting beauty, her dark side. There disease suddenly exploded and his personal lockdown lasted three years, to which he reacted with extraordinary force. Today Francesca Neri is a symbol of rebirth, determination and courage for all women and on the rumors of divorce Amendola denies: “It’s not absolutely true. Please, let’s not joke ”.
“I also thought about suicide”: Francesca’s shocking revelation
Impossible not to be captivated by its timeless charm, enraptured by its statuesque body, entranced by its magnetic eyes. Behind so much infinite beauty, however, there is also much more, which Francesca Neri herself told with an open heart inautobiography ‘Like living flesh‘, demonstrating incredible strength. L’childhood almost happy, the irreducible distance from the mother. She frees herself from the need to please everyone, as a sensitive and stubborn girl she begins to study cinema, determined to achieve your dreams even going against her family who wanted her lawyer. Until the moment she says enough, she decides to give a break from the claustrophobic life of the provinces and she runs away from Trento, determined to move to Rome, where she discovers another world and another self. Another life begins for her: the world of cinema opens its doors to her, collaborations with the greatest national and foreign directors begin. And together with the films that have made millions of viewers fall in love, come success, awards, red carpets, the marriage with Claudio Amendola.
The same body that directors and spectators have idolized is what stops his story out of the blue. Affected by a chronic bladder diseasedisabling, which causes widespread pain: the interstitial cystitis. This pathology forces her to a forced stop for three long years. She remains away from the public, isolated in a room at home, in what turns out to be not only a physical, but also an emotional, closure with devastating effects. “I also thought about suicide – revealed Francesca Neri -. When the lockdown came, seeing others sharing the same isolation made me feel better. But my personal lockdown it didn’t last a few months, but three years, in which I just wanted to be left alone ”.
Illness and rebirth
The illness that came and exploded suddenly changed many things in his life, with repercussions also in theintimacy. As she herself confided, after the passion with her husband Claudio Amendola, with whom she had declared to “have sex at least three times a week”, the disease ended up upsetting her way of loving too. “With your partner you invent a new way of having intimacy, you have to make do“. Francesca drags herself between the sofa and the bathtub all the time, where she tries to find relief from the burning and pain in her bladder. “I said to Claudio, take our son and take him away, I wanted spare him my pain. But he has always remained, did not give up. He always finds me, as I do with him ”. As happens in the great love stories, Amendola has always listened and understood her all this time. The medical visits, the search for treatment.
Then the turning point and the rebirth: “I became aware that I would not get rid of it anymore and I had to learn to live with it and manage it”. Francesca decides to open up, not to keep everything inside her anymore, to tell about her illness and her life, in a courageous autobiography in which her emotions are made flesh. In the hot summer of divorces, after 25 years of relationship, rumors have started to circulate these days about one of them possible separation. Categorically denied by Amendola himself, who addressed to Francesca about him: “In a relationship, what matters is the confidence and our luck was that we met when we grew up. My life is in his hands and his is in mine. It’s wonderful, those who don’t have it don’t know they get lost ”. Therefore, no separation in sight, and as for the rumors about the end of their relationship, Amendola himself rejects them to the sender: “It’s absolutely not true, for heaven’s sake. I don’t understand who could have spread such a rumor. Please, let’s not joke“.