THE NAME OF THE ROSE (1986)

Wrongly condemned to burn at the stake, Perlman’s hunchback, Salvatore, bursts into a lullaby, ‘Ninna Nanna Sette E Venti’…

“That is me singing. When we were rehearsing lighting the fire, Jean-jacques Annaud was describing how the fire would come up. I said, ‘Wouldn’t I blow on it? It’s a bright, shiny object.’ Then somebody came up with that lullaby, which is a real lullaby, and I learned it and sang it. It was one of those moments where we all looked at each other and went, ‘It’s not what we intended to shoot, but that’s our scene.’ It’s why we do this, the surprises.”