Geronimo Meynier

Geronimo Meynier (5 July 1941 – 23 January 2021) was an Italian film actor who starred in Italian cinema of the 1950s and 1960s. He debuted in Amici per la pelle in 1955 at age 14. His last film was in 1968. The Italian actor Geronimo Meynier shone in the mid-1950s as a child star, his filmography stopped at eighteen films, but he lives in private for almost half a century. He was born during the Second World War in the port of Fiume, which today bears the name Rijeka and is located in Croatia, but then it belonged to Italy. Geronimo came from a well-to-do family, his grandfather founded a large paper factory in Fiume, his ancestors were from France, which is also indicated by the surname. Rijeka was annexed to Yugoslavia after the war, but the Meynier family fled from communist partisans in 1943 due to their belonging to a higher social class. Geronimo spent part of his childhood in a boys' boarding school in Austria, in 1954 he returned to his parents in Italy. Shortly thereafter, he auditioned for the upcoming film directed by Franco Rossi, Friends for Life (Amici per la pelle, 1955). He already impressed the jury by the fact that, unlike the other three hundred boys, he came to the audition without his parents. Finally, he was chosen and his father then signed a contract with the film company Cinecittà, which guaranteed Geronimo an income of ten times the average salary at the time. The film Friends for Life, about the friendship of two teenagers from different social strata, attracted the attention of experts in particular, triumphed at the Venice festival and won a trophy at the awards given by the Italian Syndicate of Film Journalists. Even though the fourteen-year-old Geronimo Meynier became a...