Wait. What was the answer to Dr. Lessing's final riddle? You can't ask a riddle and then not give us the answer, movie. That's so not cool. Actually, the movie can and does. Benigni has gone on record to say the riddle has no solution and "that it was nonsensical to point [out] the ridiculousness of the situation." (Source)

Dora and Guido are married in real life. Okay, Dora and Guido aren't real, but the actors who play them, Roberto Benigni and Nicoletta Braschi, are real and really married…in real life. (Source)

Life Is Beautiful is not based on a specific story or event, but it did draw inspiration from Rubino Romeo Salmoni's memoir, In the End, I Beat Hitler. Salmoni used gallows humor to show that his life was not destroyed by his time in a concentration camp. If anything, Salmoni believed the ability for Jews to live and appreciate life was the ultimate defeat for Hitler and his goal to exterminate the Jews. (Source)

Good news comes in twos for Benigni. He's one of two directors to have directed himself to an Oscar win for Best Actor. The other is Laurence Olivier, who won the Academy Award for his performance in Hamlet (1948). Benigni is also the second person to win an Oscar for a lead acting performance in a foreign-language film. The first was fellow Italian Sophia Loren for her performance in Two Woman (1961), and the third was Marion Cotillard in La Vie en Rose (2007). All around, great company to be in. (Source)

Of course, it hasn't been all rainbows and sunshine and Academy Awards for Benigni. There have also been Razzies. In fact, Benigni is one of an exclusive group of thespians who have won both Oscars and Golden Raspberries, which are basically the anti-Oscars given out for a year's worst films and performances.

Benigni won his Golden Raspberry for his acting as the titular character in Pinocchio (2002). Yeah, it may not have been the best choice to have a then 50-year-old man play the puppet who wants to be a real boy. Seriously, just look at this clip.

And it's not like Benigni isn't in good company. Other famous thespians who have won both Academy Awards and Golden Raspberries include Halle Berry, Kevin Costner, Liza Minnelli, and, our old friend, Laurence Olivier. (Source)

Another first for our Roberto was jumping over rows of chairs in his exuberance about winning the Oscar for Life is Beautiful. Life was obviously pretty beautiful for him at that moment. For everyone who hadn't stopped bawling since seeing the film, that poignant moment probably didn't help. (Source).