Superstar Lady Gaga had to dig deep for her latest role playing The Black Widow who hired a hitman to kill the heir to the Gucci empire.
Actress and singer Gaga, 35, refused to meet with Patrizia Reggiani, not wanting to be seen to endorse her crime.
Instead, the star drew on her own history of abuse to harness a depth of emotion needed for her most demanding part to date.
Gaga, real name Stefani Germanotta, says: “There are a lot of things I’ve been through in my life, traumatic experiences, that I drew upon to play Patrizia.”
This week, cinema fans can see the results in House of Gucci – the much-anticipated tale about the family at the heart of the famous fashion label.
Patrizia, 72, is said to have been pleased Gaga played her.
She still lords it in Milan, some 25 years after ordering the hit on her ex-husband Maurizio Gucci, 46.
He was gunned down on the steps of Via Palestro 20, his offices in Milan, as he arrived for work on March 27, 1995.
Just one word was written in Patrizia’s diary on the day of the assassination – “paradeisos”, or “paradise”.
Maurizio was head of the fashion house. He was the son of actor Rodolfo Gucci and grandson of the company’s founder Guccio Gucci.
Patrizia was implicated in his death after an unexpected tip-off to police.
She paid £250,000, saved from the monthly allowance Maurizio gave her after their acrimonious divorce, to have her husband killed. “If it’s the last thing I do, I want to see him dead,” she reportedly once told a housekeeper.
Patrizia was arrested two years later and her five-month trial, which she attended dressed head-to-toe in Gucci, caused a sensation.
She was called the Black Widow by the Italian press, and the prosecution argued Patrizia desperately wanted control over the Gucci estate.
She also, it was said, wanted to prevent her ex-husband marrying his lover Paola Franchi, now 68.
The impending marriage would have cut Patrizia’s spousal maintenance in half to just over £600,000 a year – a sum she once famously declared amounted to “a bowl of lentils”.
Patrizia even said in court: “It’s better to cry in a Rolls-Royce than be happy on a bicycle.”
She was found guilty of arranging the murder and sentenced to 29 years in jail. It was cut to 18 years on appeal after it was argued she was suffering from a narcissistic personality disorder.
With credit for good behaviour, she was released in October 2016.
She could have left prison earlier if she had agreed to take part in a work release programme. She dismissed that notion, saying: “I’ve never worked in my life and I don’t intend to start now.”
The hitman – debt-ridden pizzeria owner Benedetto Ceraulo – was hired through an intermediary and got a whole life jail sentence.
On her release from prison, Patrizia was asked by a TV crew: “Why did you hire a hitman to kill Maurizio Gucci? Why didn’t you shoot him yourself?”
She replied, deadpan: “My eyesight is not so good – I didn’t want to miss.”
Later, in a documentary about her life, she gave further insight into the motivation for her crime, saying: “I was furious with Maurizio.
“I went around asking everyone, even the local grocer, is there someone who has the courage to murder my husband?”
Now living alone in Milan with her cat, she has since lamented: “Few women can truly capture the heart of a man, even fewer manage to own it.”
Patrizia is estranged from the two daughters she had with Maurizio – Allesandra and Allegra.
She is no longer allowed to use the Gucci surname but says: “I still feel like a Gucci – in fact, the most Gucci of them all.”
And she can still be seen wandering Milan’s fashion shops in dark glasses, dripping in gold jewellery, with a pet macaw on her shoulder.
The movie is based on Sara Gay Forden’s 2001 book The House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour and Greed.
Adam Driver plays Maurizio and co-stars include Jared Leto, Jeremy Irons, Salma Hayek and Al Pacino.
The film spans three decades of fashion, passion, betrayal, decadence and, ultimately, revenge.
Patrizia was born in 1948 to a humble family in a province of Modena. But as Maurizio’s father Rodolfo commented on meeting her, she was “a social climber who has nothing in mind but money”.
Maurizio and Patrizia married in 1972 and were together for 20 years. Their flashy, lavish lifestyle regularly made headlines.
Holidays were at their chalet in St Moritz, their huge 5th Avenue penthouse in Manhattan’s Olympic Tower – or on board their 200ft-long wooden yacht, The Creole.
They also owned a villa in Acapulco, a farm in rural Connecticut, and various private islands dotted around the world.
The licence plates on their fleet of luxury cars read “Mauizia” – the original blended couple name.
Patrizia threw extravagant colour-coded parties for their glittering circle.
The clothes, decor and food were all of a single hue – orange being her favourite. She once spent £9,000 a month on orchids alone.
But in 1985 Patrizia’s incredible world came crashing down when Maurizio told her he was going on a short business trip to Florence.
The following day, he sent a friend to tell his wife he would not be returning. The marriage was over.
It was a move that was, ultimately, to cost him his life.
- House of Gucci opens in cinemas on Friday, November 26
