Monica Bellucci will get a career David di Donatello award, Italy's equivalent of the Oscars, at this year's ceremony on May 11, organizers said Thursday. Italian Cinema Academy President and Artistic Director Piera Detassis described Bellucci's career as "stellar and wise" and noted the "French cinema's devotion to her".

Bellucci, 56, began her career as a model before moving into Italian and later American and French cinema. Bellucci played a Bride of Dracula in Francis Ford Coppola's gothic romance film Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) and Malèna Scordia in the Italian-language romantic drama Malèna (2000). She was in the controversial Gaspar Noé arthouse horror film Irréversible (2002), and portrayed Mary Magdalene in Mel Gibson's biblical drama The Passion of the Christ (2004).