From Sophia Loren to Toni Morrison: Legendary interviewer Alain Elkann has spoken to them all

Franco-Italian journalist and writer Alain Elkann may not be known to some Americans, but in Europe he is a mix of Barbara Walters, Oprah Winfrey and Anderson Cooper. A mind with boundless curiosity, Elkann has interviewed the world’s top creatives, politicians and business leaders over the past three decades. Many appear in Elkann’s new book, “Alain Elkann interviews Vol 2″ (Assouline, released November 17). Here, Elkann recounts some of the biggest moments of his still-burgeoning career — including a big landing that got away.

How could I ever choose the most interesting people I’ve interviewed over the past 30 years. Some of them have unfortunately died.

Others are still very much alive. The two great actresses, Brigitte Bardot and Sophia Loren, just turned 90 and I interviewed them both. Brigitte Bardot was nice and kind and we talked about her passion for dogs and animals.

I went to interview Sophia Loren for her 60th birthday in 1994 in her elegant apartment in Geneva – a huge bookcase full of Oscars. I mistakenly thought it would be an exclusive scoop for La Stampa, the newspaper where I work, but later I realized that she did similar birthday interviews with our competitors Il Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica.

Architects Norman Foster and Renzo Piano are also nearing 90 – and Frank Gehry is 95! All three remain extremely active, full of energy and talk when interviewed as if age doesn’t exist.

Renzo Piano always wears light blue shirts and sweaters that match his blue eyes.

To get to Renzo’s house above Genoa, you have to take a transparent tube-like elevator that goes up a hill to his studio and office – both of which look like a series of greenhouses.

Sadly, the others I interviewed are gone, but our conversations remain.

I remember my interview with the black writer – while she insisted that she be called a “black writer” — Toni Morrison, very ill in her bed just weeks before she died in 2019, in her beautiful white painted wooden house perched on the Hudson River.

I was impressed by the clarity of her mind, as if her illness did not exist even as she was succumbing to it.

Interviews with business people are always fascinating, such as cosmetics magnate Ronald Lauder, who came to see me in the courtyard of a small hotel in the 7th arrondissement in Paris, where we discussed, during the pandemic, his involvement in deep into the challenges it faces. global Jewry.

I later interviewed François Pinault at the Paris headquarters of his company Kering and learned how he evolved his family’s wood trading business into the global luxury giant that now owns Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent. Pinault and Lauder have both become major art philanthropists.

Zambian-born macroeconomist Dambisa Moyo’s 2023 interview was also illuminating. She became a Baroness in the House of Lords, first initiated by Queen Elizabeth II and then, when the Queen died, carried out by King Charles III.

Moyo is a stunning example of the incredible diversity and lack of glass ceiling we now see in the post-colonial British ruling classes.

Robert Silvers, the former editor of The New York Review of Books, was precise and concerned about every single sentence in our 2017 interview, calling my editor at 2 a.m. to ask if we could change a semicolon.

Easiest to handle was English actor Kristin Scott Thomas, who is impressively able to embody any character as if it were “normal” behavior. She is married to John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, another past interview.

Speaking of actors, in Paris, in a cnear Saint-Germain-des-Prés, I had breakfast early one morning with iconic movie star Marcello Mastroianni, who was already unwell.

After years of asking him for an interview, suddenly, out of the blue, that morning he said, “You didn’t want to interview me?” When I replied, “Yes, of course,” he said, “Let’s do it.” I had to borrow a pen and pad from a room waiter café, and we did it.

There are unique thrills from visiting the studios of great artists such as Anselm Kiefer, Georg Baselitz, Tracey Emin, Antony Gormley, Marina Abromovic, Julian Schnabel, John Currin and Damien Hirst.

Anselm Kiefer’s large studio on the outskirts of Paris looks more like a factory than an artist’s production space. Kiefer has a lot of energy and before our interview he asked me to travel to Barjac in the south of France where he has a second studio.

Here, Kiefer has created a series of cement towers set into the landscape, and underground is a vast labyrinth of tunnels: a metaphor for the horror of the Nazi concentration camps.

I met Georg Baselitz with his gallerist Thaddaeus Ropac during the Venice Biennale. I asked Baselitz if he would draw a dog for me and without fuss he took a pen and drew a dog on a restaurant napkin. It was a nice gesture for which I was very grateful.

After visiting Tracey Emin in East London for an interview, I saw her again in New York for dinner at a Viennese restaurant. I was sitting next to a funny and charming young woman who was talking to me about art. Tracey later said: “She was Princess Beatrice, one of Prince Andrew’s two daughters.”

Also in New York, Julian Schnabel lives in a very large apartment with very large rooms and large paintings on the walls and large furniture and dark colors. It’s a bit like a Gothic castle. And then there’s Damien Hirst, who I met in Venice through Pinault.

When he agreed to be interviewed, he asked to come to my house in London. I like that Damien was in no rush and just wanted to hang around. I was impressed by the fact that this energetic man with a difficult reputation was actually incredibly sweet, pleasant and kind in my apartment.

I met the artist duo Gilbert and George many years ago in a restaurant in Turin and went to see them several times in their studio at their home in East London.

George is very polite, very English in his disposition and Gilbert is from the Italian region of Tyrol. Like George, Gilbert is always dressed in traditional English Harris Tweed. I love that they never eat at home so the kitchen is wasted because they even have breakfast at a local cafe.

In the world of fashion, I had the privilege of interviewing everyone from Miuccia Prada and Diane von Fürstenberg to Vivienne Westwood, Calvin Klein and Oscar de la Renta, among others.

I interviewed Valentino Garavani, who is still alive and with us today. Valentino worked in Rome and was already famous in the 90s when both the supermodels and the new Milanese kings of fashion like Giorgio Armani and Gianni Versace arrived.

I have a remarkable memory of a New Year’s Eve in the Swiss Alps at Valentino’s house where Frank Sinatra was a guest. When midnight came, Sinatra began to sing “Strangers in the Night.”

Years before I spied Sinatra at the 21 Club in New York and shook his hand.

But I didn’t think I’d see her again and experience her singing “Strangers in the Night” for New Year’s.

Sinatra is among my greatest memories; I’m sorry I couldn’t interview him.