Del Toro salutes E.T. maker Carlo Rambaldi ahead of Walk of Fame honour
Guillermo del Toro has saluted Carlo Rambaldi, the Italian maker behind E.T., ahead of Rambaldi receiving a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
In a video message shared exclusively with Variety, del Toro said Rambaldi “changed the world of special effects, makeup and puppetry” Variety. The tribute was recorded for a ceremony held on Thursday, Oct. 15, at 1611 Vine Street in Hollywood, according to the same report.
The honour is the 2,860th star on the Walk of Fame, the line of pavement plaques in Hollywood that marks work in film, television and music Walk of Fame. The ceremony was scheduled for 11:30am PT on Oct. 15 and organised by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. Expected guests include Cinecitta president Antonio Saccone, members of Rambaldi’s family, and Matt Winston.
Winston is the son of Stan Winston, the special-effects master who designed the dinosaurs for “Jurassic Park,” Variety reported. His presence links two generations of creature makers.
Rambaldi died in 2012 at age 86. He was a three-time Academy Award winner for special effects, for “King Kong” (1976), “Alien” (1979) and “E.T.” (1983).
He designed the title character in Steven Spielberg’s “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.” Before that film, he had collaborated with Spielberg on “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” He later worked with David Lynch on “Dune.”
His career stretched far beyond Hollywood. Directors he worked with include Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Marco Ferreri, Mario Bava, Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, John Huston, Ridley Scott and Oliver Stone.
Rambaldi was born on Sept. 15, 1925, in Vigarano Mainarda outside Ferrara in Emilia-Romagna, Italy. He was the son of a bicycle mechanic and graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna in 1951.
He entered cinema in 1956 when asked to create a dragon for a low-budget science-fiction movie. From that start he built a career in model-making, animatronics and makeup effects, the physical craft of building creatures and illusions for the camera.
What makes this stand out is the chain it traces. Italy is marking the star as a national celebration, and del Toro’s message places Rambaldi’s hand-built work at the centre of modern screen fantasy. A star laid in pavement. A name spoken by film-makers still working now.
