Rossana Podestà – Italian Actress

Rossana Podestà (born 20 June 1934 in Tripoli) is a former Italian actress born in the Italian colony of Libya, where she spent her first years in Tripoli and later moved to Rome after World War II. Rossana Podesta still lives in Italy, in Dubino (Sondrio province). She lived with the famous mountain climber, explorer and journalist Walter Bonatti; he died on September 13, 2011.

Acting career
Podestà’s most memorable role was as Helen in Helen of Troy, produced by Robert Wise in 1956. She could not speak English so she learned her lines by rote with a voice coach. The movie gave Podestà international exposure, and she performed alongside a young Brigitte Bardot. Thanks to her starring in the Mexican film Rosanna (film), she became very popular in Latin America.

Podestà also worked in the movie Ulisse, directed by Mario Camerini, and in the sixties and seventies she acted in some romantic movies, including Paolo il caldo and Il prete sposato. Her last performance was in 1985′s Segreti segreti, directed by Giuseppe Bertolucci. She married and then divorced movie producer Marco Vicario.

Text from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Anna Maria Alberghetti – Italian-Born Singer And Actress

Anna Maria Alberghetti (born 15 May 1936) is an Italian-born operatic singer and actress.Born in Pesaro, Marche, she starred on Broadway and won a Tony Award in 1962 as Best Actress (Musical) for Carnival"! (she tied with Diahann Carroll for the musical No Strings).

Alberghetti was a child prodigy. Her father was an opera singer and concert master of the Rome Opera Company. Her mother was a pianist. At age 6, Anna Maria sang in a concert on the Isle of Rhodes with a 100-piece orchestra. She performed at Carnegie Hall in New York at the age of 13.

She also entered into film as a teenager. Her cinema appearances include The Medium (1951), Here Comes the Groom (1951), The Stars Are Singing (1953), The Last Command (1955), with Dean Martin in Ten Thousand Bedrooms (1957), Duel at Apache Wells (1957), and as Princess Charming opposite Jerry Lewis in Cinderfella (1960).

Alberghetti appeared twice on the cover of Life magazine. She sang on the CBS variety program The Ed Sullivan Show more than 50 times. She guest starred in 1957 on NBC’s The Gisele MacKenzie Show. That same year, she performed in the premiere episode of The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom on ABC. She has toured in many theatrical productions and continues with her popular one-woman cabaret act. She had roles in a pair of 2001 films, The Whole Shebang and Friends and Family.

Her sister Carla also became a musical artist who appeared in many stage productions. She eventually became Anna Maria’s replacement in her Tony-winning role on Broadway.Alberghetti appeared in television commercials for Good Seasons salad dressing during the 1970s.

She was married to television producer-director Claudio Guzman from 1964 to 1974. She was referenced in Ira Levin’s book Rosemary’s Baby and T. C. Boyle’s short story "Sorry Fugu".

Text from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Elsa Martinelli – Italian Actress

Elsa Martinelli (born 30 January 1935) is an Italian actress and former fashion model.

Born Elisa Tia in Grosseto, Tuscany, she moved to Rome with her family and in 1953 was discovered by Roberto Capucci who introduced her to the world of fashion. She became a model and began playing small roles in films. She appeared in Claude Autant-Lara‘s Le Rouge et le noir (1954), but her first important film role came the following year with The Indian Fighter opposite Kirk Douglas. Douglas claims to have spotted her on a magazine cover and hired her for his production company, Bryna Productions. In 1956 she won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 6th Berlin International Film Festival for playing the title role in Mario Monicelli’s Donatella.

From the mid 1950s through the late 1960s, she divided her time between Europe and the USA appearing films such as Four Girls in Town (1957) with George Nader, Manuela (1957) with Trevor Howard, Prisoner of the Volga (1959) with John Derek, Hatari! (1962) with John Wayne, The Pigeon That Took Rome (1962) with Charlton Heston, The Trial with Anthony Perkins, The V.I.P.s (1963) with Orson Welles, Rampage (1963) with Robert Mitchum, and Woman Times Seven (1967) with Lex Barker. In Candy (1968), her co-stars were Charles Aznavour, Marlon Brando, Richard Burton, James Coburn, Walter Matthau and Ringo Starr.

Since the late 1960s, she has worked in Europe in mostly foreign language productions. Her last English language role was as Carla the Agent in 1992s Once Upon a Crime. Her most recent appearance was in the 2005 European television series Orgoglio as the Duchessa di Monteforte.

Martinelli was first married to Count Franco Mancinelli Scotti di San Vito, by whom she has a daughter, Cristiana Mancinelli (born 1958), also an actress. She later was married to the Paris Match photographer and 1970s furniture designer Willy Rizzo.

Text from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Gloria Guida – Italian Actress

Gloria Guida (Italian pronunciation: [ˈɡlɔrja ˈɡwida]; born 19 November 1955) is an Italian actress and model. She is most famous for starring in the commedia erotica all’italiana.

Biography
Gloria Guida was born in Merano, Trentino-Alto Adige, to a family of Emilia Romagna origin. She moved with her family to Bologna as a child. She first began a singing career, starting in her father’s dancing place on the Romagna’s coast. Then she took up modeling, becoming Miss Teenage Italia in 1974.

She subsequently went on to star in many sexy comedies. Her two early films La ragazzina (Monika in English-language release) and La minorenne, both shot in the summer of 1974, are the stories of young female characters in the phase of discovering their sexuality, often reluctant between mature admirers and younger lovers. She made her real breakthrough in 1975 with La liceale (Teasers). Another film of particular success was Avere vent’anni ("To Be Twenty") in 1978, where she starred with Lilli Carati.

After her relationship and later marriage with singer and actor Johnny Dorelli, whom she met on the set of the film Bollenti spiriti, she left the cinema world. They have been married since 1991 and have a daughter.

Text from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Stefania Sandrelli

Stefania Sandrelli (born 5 June 1946 in Viareggio, Province of Lucca) is an Italian actress, famous for her many roles in the commedia all’Italiana, starting from 1960s. She was 15 years old when she starred in Divorce, Italian Style, as Marcello Mastroianni‘s cousin, Angela.

She was born in Viareggio, Tuscany. She had a long relationship with Italian singer-songwriter Gino Paoli. Their daughter Amanda Sandrelli, born in 1964, is also an actress.

Selected filmography
The Fascist (1961) her first role
Gioventù di notte (1961)
Divorce, Italian Style (1961)
Il Fornaretto di Venezia (1963)
Seduced and Abandoned (1964)
Io la conoscevo bene (1965)
L’immorale (1967)
Partner (1968)
Brancaleone alle Crociate (1970)
The Conformist (1970)
Devil in the Brain (1972)
Somewhere Beyond Love (1974)
C’eravamo tanto amati (1974)
1900 (1976)
Death Rite (1976)
Traffic Jam (1979)
La terrazza (1980)
Eccezzziunale… veramente (1982)
Vacanze di Natale (1983)
La chiave (1983)
La famiglia (1987)
Il piccolo diavolo (1989)
Jamón, jamón (1992)
Of Love and Shadows (1994)
Stealing Beauty (1996)
La cena (1998)
L’ultimo bacio (2001)
A Talking Picture (2003)
Gente di Roma (2003)
La prima cosa bella (2010)
La passione (2010)

Text from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Ornella Muti – Italian Actress

Ornella Muti was born in Rome as Francesca Romana Rivelli, to a Neapolitan father and Estonian mother. Her maternal grandparents immigrated from Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), Russia, to Estonia. She has an older sister, Claudia (born 1951).

Career
Muti modeled as a teenager and made her film debut in 1970 in La moglie più bella (aka The Most Beautiful Wife).

She has primarily worked in Italian films but she made her British film debut as Princess Aura in Flash Gordon in 1980. American movies she appeared in include Oscar (1991) and Once Upon a Crime (1992). She is mostly known to the French for appearing in a TV commercial of Giovanni Panzani pasta.

Muti was voted "The Most Beautiful Woman in the World" in 1994 by a worldwide poll of readers of the magazine Class.

In 2008, Ornella Muti introduced her own line of jewellery. She opened new shops in Paris, Milan, Rome, Riga, Moscow and Almaty. She insured her breasts for $350,000.

Personal life
Muti has been married twice, to Alessio Orano (her fellow actor in the film "The Most Beautiful Wife", 1975–1981), and Federico Facchinetti (1988–1996).

Muti has three children: Naike Rivelli (b. 1974), who is also a model and actress having a close resemblance to her mother, and whose father is Spanish film producer José Luis Bermúdez de Castro Acaso; a son, Andrea, and a second daughter, Carolina, both from her marriage to Facchinetti.

From 1998 to 2008, Muti lived with Stefano Piccolo, a plastic surgeon. Since 2008, her romantic partner is Fabrice Kerhervé.

Text from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Stefania Casini–Italian Actress, Director And Journalist

After graduating in Architecture, Stefania began a career in acting and worked with Pietro Germi, Bernardo Bertolucci, Peter Greenaway and Dario Argento. She moved to New York in the late 70s, where she acted in Andy Warhol‘s ‘Bad’. While in New York she decided to move behind the camera, and became a director.

With Francesca Marciano, she wrote and directed the film "Lontano da dove", presented at the Venice Film Festival (1983). In 1997 she wrote and directed another feature film "Un Paradiso di Bugie". Her career as director also includes the making of six feature films for the Italian television network MEDIASET.

A passionate traveler, Stefania has made a great number of documentaries and reportages for RAI and MEDIASET. She focuses her attention on contemporary topics concerning women and young people. She has made many hard-hitting series including: "Islam: stories of women"; "Latin America: stories of women"; "To be 20 years old in…" (broadcast in ten European Countries 2004-2005); "So close so far :portraits in the suburbs". "Schiaffo alla mafia"(A blow to the Mafia)

Between 2000-2002 , Stefania was the Artistic Director of Siena’s Film Festival "Terra di Siena". In 2010 she was Managing Director of DGTV IESTV.

Currently, Stefania writes and directs programs, reportages and documentaries for RAI, and for satellite channels: RAI Sat Cinema World, Gambero Rosso Channel, and Sky. She also works as a journalist, contributing to several popular women’s magazines.

Text from “IMDb”

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Enrica Bianchi Colombatto–Italian Actress

Enrica Bianchi Colombatto (born July 23, 1942 in Brescia, Lombardy) is an Italian actress, usually known by her stagename of Erika Blanc.

Movie career
Her most notable role was as the first fictional character Emmanuelle in Io, Emanuelle. Blanc also starred in several horror films, including Kill, Baby, Kill, The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave, The Devil’s Nightmare, and Mark of the Devil Part II.

She recently came back with little but very intense roles under the direction of Turkish-born director Ferzan Ozpetek, acting as Antonia’s mother in Le fate ignoranti (2001), and as the sensitive, alcohol-addicted Maria Clara in Cuore Sacro (2005). In 2003 she also starred as the grandmother in Poco più di un anno fa-Diario di un pornodivo, directed by Marco Filiberti.

Text from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Marisa Allasio – Italian Actress

Marisa Allasio (born Maria Luisa Lucia Allasio in Turin on 14 July 1936), is a retired Italian actress of the 1950s. She appeared in nearly twenty pictures between 1952 and 1959.

She left her acting career in 1958, year of her marriage with Count Pier Francesco Calvi di Bergolo (born 2 December 1933, Turin), son of Princess Iolanda di Savoia, first-born of Vittorio Emanuele III and Elena del Montenegro. They had two children: Carlo Giorgio Dmitri Drago Maria Laetitia, dei Conti Calvi di Bergolo (born 1959, Rome) Anda Federica Angelica Maria, dei Conti Calvi di Bergolo (born 1962, Rome)

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Filmography
Perdonami!, Mario Costa (1952)
Gli eroi della domenica, Mario Camerini (1953)
Cuore di mamma, Luigi Capuano (1954)
Ballata tragica, Luigi Capuano (1954)
Ragazze d’oggi, Luigi Zampa (1955)
Le diciottenni, Mario Mattoli (1955)
War and Peace, King Vidor (1956)
Maruzzella, Luigi Capuano (1956)
Poveri ma belli, Dino Risi (1957)
Marisa la civetta, Mauro Bolognini (1957)
Camping, Franco Zeffirelli (1957)
Belle ma povere, Dino Risi (1957)
Le schiave di Cartagine, Guido Brignone (1957)
Susanna tutta panna, Steno (1957)
Venezia, la luna e tu, Dino Risi (1958)
Nudi come Dio li creò (Nackt, wie Gott sie schuf), Hans Schott-Schöbinger (1958)
Carmela è una bambola, Gianni Puccini (1958)
Seven Hills of Rome (Italian title: Arrivederci Roma), Roy Rowland (1958)

Text from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Edwige Fenech Showing Skin

Few female European actresses and television personality have been more generous when it comes to showing skin both in movies and magazines than Edwige Fenech. Here’s a gallery celebrating this fact.

Edwige fenech showing skin:

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Daniela Bianchi – Italian Actress

Daniela Bianchi (born 31 January 1942) is an Italian actress, whose best known part was Tatiana Romanova in the 1963 James Bond movie From Russia with Love.

Born in Rome, she was the 1st runner-up in the 1960 Miss Universe contest, where she was also voted Miss Photogenic by the press. Her film career began in 1958. In From Russia with Love her voice was dubbed by Barbara Jefford.

She made a number of French and Italian movies after From Russia with Love, the last being Scacco Internazionale in 1968. One of her later films was Operation Kid Brother (also known as OK Connery and Operation Double 007), which was a James Bond spoof filmed in English (though Bianchi was again dubbed) and starring Sean Connery’s brother, Neil Connery. In 1970, she retired from acting to marry a Genoan shipping magnate, with whom she has a son.

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What The Heck???

Sophia Loren is one of my absolutely favourite among the classic European actresses and I guess that enjoying her matchless beauty is the reason that I had seen this photo on the net several times before I realized that the unimportant guy in the background is actually standing there pissing into the water – Ted

Image found at “Just Some Broad”

More images of the beautiful Sophia

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Gloria Guida – Italian Actress And Model

Gloria Guida (born 19 November 1955) is an Italian actress and model. She is most famous for starring in sexy film comedies.

Biography
Gloria Guida was born in Merano, South Tyrol, to a family of Emilia Romagna origin. She moved with her family to Bologna as a child. She first began a singing career, starting in her father’s dancing place on the Romagna’s coast. Then she took up modeling, becoming Miss Teenage Italia in 1974.

She subsequently went on to star in many sexy comedies. Her two early films La ragazzina (Monika in English-language release) and La minorenne, both shot in the summer of 1974, are the stories of young female characters in the phase of discovering their sexuality, often reluctant between mature admirers and younger lovers. She made her real breakthrough in 1975 with La liceale (Teasers). Another film of particular success was Avere vent’anni ("To Be Twenty") in 1978, where she starred with Lilli Carati.

After her relationship and later marriage with singer and actor Johnny Dorelli, whom she met on the set of the film Bollenti spiriti, she left the cinema world. They have been married since 1991 and have a daughter. Text from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Antonella Lualdi – Italian Actress

Antonella Lualdi (born on 6 July 1931) is an Italian film actress. Her luminescent beauty has graced many Italian and French films in the 1950s and 1960s, notably in Claude Autant-Lara’s film Le rouge et le noir in 1954, opposite Gérard Philipe.

She was born Antonietta De Pascale in Beirut, Lebanon to an Italian father and a Greek mother, and grew up fluent in Arabic, French and Italian. She began her career in 1949, and married Italian actor Franco Interlenghi in 1955, with whom she had two daughters, Stella and Antonellina, the later also an actress.

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Lilli Carati–Italian Actress

Biography
Lilli Carati was born in Varese (Lombardy). In 1974, she won the title "Miss Elegance" at a beauty contest in Calabria and began to work as a fashion model in Milan. She became the first runner-up at Miss Italia contest of 1975 and moved on to cinema.

Most of her box office hits were in the genre of "sex comedy". However, she also played in films of different genres such as Squadra antifurto (1977, a crime story with Tomas Milian), Le evase – Storie di sesso e di violenze (1978, a prototypical exploitation film), and La fine del mondo nel nostro solito letto in una notte piena di pioggia (1987, a film by Lina Wertmüller). In several of her films she displayed a considerable talent in acting.

She also appeared in nude photos on the pages of Italian men’s magazines like Playmen and Albo Blitz. About 1990, she retired from public life.

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Films
The first film she played the lead role was 1976 La professoressa di scienze naturali ("School Days") by Michele Massimo Tarantini. In this film, Carati plays a substitute teacher of natural science named Stefania Marini who soon gets one of her students, Andrea (Marco Gelardini), as her lover and a physician Baron Cacciapuopolo (Michele Gammino) as an admirer. In the end, she marries the Baron but keeps Andrea as a lover.

Her next "school film" was La compagna di banco by Mariano Laurenti in 1977. In this film, Carati is a rich schoolgirl and a basketball player named Simona Girardi with a lover named Mario (Antonio Melidoni). Alvaro Vitali, a regular of school films, is present in both films as the main comic character.

In 1977, in Candido erotico (Copenhagen Nights) by Claudio de Molinis, she plays Charlotte, a young student who is drawn into confusion when she falls in love with her stepmother’s lover, Carlo (Mircha Carven) who works as an actor in sex shows. Eventually, she discovers the ménage à trois involving her father, stepmother, and Carlo and decides to carry on with her relationship.

Her greatest success came with Avere vent’anni ("To Be Twenty") by Fernando Di Leo in 1978. The film, about the story of two girls who leave home and move into a hippie commune in pursuit of freedom but end up in the hands of thugs to be violently murdered, later attained a cult status as expressed by its screening at Venice Film Festival in 2004. In this film, the side-kick to Carati (Tina) was Gloria Guida (Lia), a popular star of 1970s. The film also contains a brief lesbian sex scene with the two actresses.

In Il corpo della ragassa (1979) by Pasquale Festa Campanile, Carati plays Teresa Aguzzi, a naïve-looking but cunning country girl involved in a Pygmalion story set in 1950s Italy. The same year she appeared in Senza buccia (Skin Deep) by Marcello Aliprandi, a story of love relationships at a holiday hideout.

In Hay un fantasma nel mi cama (or C’è un fantasma nel mio letto, 1980), an Italo-Spanish production by èClaudio de Molinis, she played newlywed Adelaide Fumagalli who arrives at the "Black Castle" in England with her husband on honeymoon. The castle is home to the ghost of 17th century nobleman Sir Archibald, played by veteran actor Renzo Montagnani who played Teresa’s father in Il corpo della ragassa. Sir Archibald plays his games to seduce Adelaide which will eventually end badly for himself.

Il marito in vacanza (1981) by Alessandro Lucidi and Mario Lucidi would again bring Carati and Montagnani together. This time Montagnani is a professor who tries to seduce Lucia Coradini (Carati), a beautiful colleague.

In 1984, Carati met director Joe d’Amato through her actress friend Jenny Tamburi and played in four D’Amato films, among which are L’alcova (The Alcove, 1984) and Il piacere (The Pleasure, 1985), both set in 1930s Italy and with Laura Gemser.

In 1987 and 1988, she appeared in a number of adult films by Giorgio Grand, along with a team of performers including Rocco Siffredi.

In 1989, she was in The Whore by Alex de Renzy and Henri Pachard. This film had the most elaborate plot among her porn films but she didn’t play the lead role.

Text from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Alida Valli – Italian Actress

The fact that the actress who later would be known simply as Valli was born “Baroness Alida Maria Laura Altenburger von Marckenstein-Frauenberg” might have suggested she was fated to be Hollywood royalty. But the Italian-Austrian actress, who would become an icon of European cinema, only brushed up against fame in America. Stardom came quickly in Italy as she shot to the top of her countries “most popular” list by the early 40s in a series of popular comedies. At the same time, she demonstrated her personal independence when in 1943––under penalty of arrest––she dropped out of films so that her image could not be used for propaganda purposes.

After the war, producer David Selznick imported her, hoping to make her into “the next Garbo,” going so far as to use only her last name in a nod to the Swedish star. She appeared in Hitchcock’s 1947 thriller The Paradine Case, after which co-star Gregory Peck exclaimed, “Not only are her shapes and features perfect: from her eyes radiates an irresistible flashing of love." But her most famous role came several years later as the mysterious refugee in Carol Reed’s The Third Man, a part for which she was regularly applauded in reviews.

But in between were appearances in a string of lacklustre productions eventually leading to her break with Selznick in 1950.  She returned to Italy to start her career again, breaking out (again) in Luchino Visconti’s dark melodrama Senso. But just as the film was gaining critical momentum, Valli was pulled into a national scandal when her husband’s close friend became the chief suspect in a drug-laden, orgy-centered murder. Three years later, Valli returned to film, slowly gaining a sturdy reputation in theatre and appearing in such European classics as George Franju’s 1960 Eyes Without a Face, Bernardo Bertolucci‘s 1970 The Spider’s Stratagem and Dario Argento‘s 1977 Suspiria.

Text from “Focus Features”

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Sylva Koscina – Italian Actress

Sylva Koscina (born August 22, 1933, Zagreb, Kingdom of Yugoslavia — died December 26, 1994, Rome, Italy) was an Italian actress.

Biography
Born in Zagreb as Sylva Koskinon of Greek and Polish descent, she may be best-remembered for her role as Iole, the bride of Hercules (Steve Reeves) in Hercules (1958) and Hercules Unchained (1960). She also played Paul Newman‘s romantic interest in The Secret War of Harry Frigg (1968).

During the Second World War when she was a teenager, she moved to Italy to live with her sister, who had married an Italian citizen.

Koscina had an extensive film career there. She also starred in the 1967 comedy caper Three Bites of the Apple with David McCallum, and Deadlier Than the Male (1967), in which she and Elke Sommer portrayed sophisticated professional killers dueling with Bulldog Drummond. She also played Danica in the Yugoslavian movie The Battle of Neretva, in 1969. She played a German doctor, Bianca, in The Hornets’ Nest with Rock Hudson.

Koscina had studied physics at the University of Naples, was Miss Di Tappa at the Tour of Italy bicycle race in 1954, as well as being a fashion model. She made a fleeting appearance in the part of an aspiring actress in Siamo uomini o caporali? [Are we men or corporals?] (1955) before making a flying catch at her great opportunity: she portrayed Giulia, daughter of the train engineer Andrea, in Pietro Germi’s Il ferroviere [The Railroad Man] (1956). Koscina immediately confirmed her talent in Guendalina (1957), where she had no difficulty playing the part of a young mother.

A lead player in popular comedies, such as Nonna Sabella [Grandmother Sabella] (1957), Ladro lui, ladra lei [He a thief, she a thief] (1958), and Poveri millionari [Poor millionaires] (1958), Koscina alternated cleverly between roles as vamp and ingenue. She represented women in search of social upward mobility, the image of an Italy that had left its worst problems behind.

Koscina was suited to sophisticated comedies like Mogli pericolose [Dangerous wives] (1958), where she made a direct sentimental challenge to poor Giorgia Moll. But she also seemed at ease draped in a peplum: she made a marvelous fiancee for Hercules in Le fatiche di Ercole [Hercules] (1958), a prototype of this kind of film. A true-life example of her popularity in Italy occurred when, in order to win her over, a police officer named Alberto Sordi let her go without issuing a traffic ticket. Sylva was later a guest on a television program, where thanked him on the air, thus getting him into lots of trouble with the police department. The incident and its aftermath inspired the movie Il vigile [The policeman] (1960), where she played herself.

In the first half of the sixties, Koscina married her lover, Raimondo Castelli, a small producer connected with Minerva Films. She managed to keep well afloat with roles in Damiano Damiani’s Il sicario [The hired killer] (1961). In La lepre e la tartaruga [The Tortoise and the Hare], an episode in Le quattro verita [The Three Fables of Love] (1963), the director Blasetti constructed a duel between Koscina and Monica Vitti. In 1965, Koscina appeared in Giulietta degli spiriti. She was also a television personality, as she was often the special guest on variety shows.

From the early 1960s, she invested most of her considerable salaries as a star in a luxurious villa, in the well-to-do district of Marino, Rome, complete with 16th-century furniture and artistic paintings. That lasted until her spending overcame her dwindling income, and she had to face a tax evasion inquest, when she was forced to sell her house in 1976. Living with Raimondo Castelli since 1960 the couple did not marry due to then Italian law and because his wife Marinella refused him an annulment. Castelli and Koscina married in Mexico in 1967, but that marriage was not recognized in Italy.

After passing thirty, she partnered with actors such as Kirk Douglas in A Lovely Way to Die (1968) and Paul Newman in The Secret War of Harry Frigg (1967), but without any luck. Her fame being a bit tarnished, it was given a boost in the second half of the sixties when she photographed bare-breasted in the Italian edition of Playboy magazine. Mauro Bolognini’s L’assolute naturale (1969) was released complete with a "chaste" full nude shot.

Text from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Virna Lisi – Italian Actress

Virna Lisi (born 8 November 1936 in Ancona) is a Cannes and César award-winning Italian film actress. She was born in Ancona, Marche, as Virna Lisa Pieralisi.

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Career
Early career
Virna Lisi began her film career in her teens. She was discovered by two Neapolitan producers (Antonio Ferrigno and Ettore Pesce) in Paris. Her debut was in La corda d’acciaio (The line of steel, 1953). Initially, she did musical films, like in E Napoli canta (Napoli sings, 1953) and the successful Questa è la vita (1954, with the popular Totò). Nonetheless, soon Virna Lisi became a figure whose beauty was more valued than her talent, like in Le diciottenni and Lo scapolo films of 1955. Still, she incarnated demanding roles, particularly in La Donna del Giorno (1956), Eva (1962), and the Italian-made spectacle Romolo e Remo (1961).

In the late 1950s, Lisi did theater at Piccolo Teatro di Milano, in I giacobini by Federico Zardi, under the direction of Giorgio Strehler. During the 1960s, Virna Lisi did comedies and, also, she participated in dramatic television productions which were of the most viewed in Italy. Also in television Lisi was the figure who promoted a toothpaste brand, with a slogan which would become a catchphrase amongst the Italians: "con quella bocca può dire ciò che vuole" (with such mouth, she can say whatever she wants).

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Hollywood career
In Hollywood, the producers were looking for a new figure of the Marilyn Monroe vibe and so Virna Lisi made a dent in Hollywood comedy as a tempting blue-eyed blonde starring opposite Jack Lemmon in How to Murder Your Wife (1965), and appearing with Tony Curtis in Not with My Wife, You Don’t! (1966). Lisi starred with Frank Sinatra, in Assault on a Queen (1966). Also Lisi starred in films such as La Ragazza e il Generale, co-starring with Rod Steiger, and two films with Anthony Quinn, The Secret of Santa Vittoria, directed by Stanley Kramer, and the war drama The 25th Hour. She also gained attention for a photo of her shaving her face that appeared on the March 1965 cover of Esquire magazine.

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Career renaissance in Europe
Indeed, to overcome her typecast just of a seductive woman, Virna Lisi sought new types of roles, of evil women or of a lover in relationships of disparate age for example. In those years, Virna Lisi participated in Italian productions, in Casanova 70 and Le bambole (1965), Arabella (1967), and Le dolci signore (1968). Also Lisi starred some arthouse films, of which The Birds, the Bees and the Italians (1965) is an example.

In the early 1970s, Virna Lisi decided temporarily to attend to her family, husband Franco Pesci and her son Corrado, born in July 1962. Nonetheless, a career renaissance occurred soon for Virna with a large list of productions, including Al di là del bene e del male (1977), Ernesto (1979), and La cicala (1980). For the film La Reine Margot (1994), Lisi portrayed a malevolent Catherine de’ Medici and so she won both the César and Cannes Film Festival awards, along with the David di Donatello award, the Italian equivalent of the Oscar.

Particularly since the late 1990s, Virna Lisi did many successful dramatic productions of television. In 2002, Lisi starred in her last film, Il più bel giorno della mia vita.

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Selected filmography

The steel rope (1953) And Naples sings (1953) Eighteen Year Olds (1955) The Bachelor (1955, uncredited) Les Hussards (1955) The woman of the day (1956) Romolo e Remo (1961) Eva (1962) Ladies and Gentlemen (1965) How to Murder Your Wife (1965) The Dolls (1965) Casanova 70 (1965) Assault on a Queen (1966) Not with My Wife, You Don’t! (1966)

The 25th Hour (1967 film) (1967) The Girl and the General (1967) Arabella (1967) The sweet ladies (1968) The Secret of Santa Vittoria (1969) The Voyeur (1970) Beyond Good and Evil (1977) Ernesto (1979) The cricket (1980) Happy Christmas Happy New Year (1990) La Reine Margot (1994) The most beautiful day in my life (2002)

Text from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Italian Favourites – Claudia Cardinale & Sophia Loren

Claudia Cardinale  is an Italian Tunisian actress, and has appeared in some of the most prominent European films of the 1960s and 1970s. The majority of Cardinale’s films have been either Italian or French. She was also an iconic sex symbol of the 1960s.Claudia Cardinale was born Claude Joséphine Rose Cardinale in La Goulette, an Italian Tunisian neighbourhood of Tunis. Her mother, Yolande Greco, was born in Tunisia to Italian emigrants from Trapani, Italy. Her father was an Italian railway worker, born in Gela, Italy. Like many Italian Tunisians, her native languages were Tunisian Arabic, French, and the Sicilian language of her parents. She developed her skill in speaking Italian as a teenager, as she pursued her acting career.

Here’s a Claudia Cardinale Picasa gallery for you.   215 sorted images all told.

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Loren was born in the Clinica Regina Margherita in Rome, daughter of Romilda Villani (1914–1991) and Riccardo Scicolone, a construction engineer. Scicolone refused to marry Villani, leaving her, a piano teacher and aspiring actress, without support. Loren’s parents had another child together, her sister Anna Maria Villani Scicolone, in 1938. Loren has two younger paternal half-brothers, Giuliano and Giuseppe. Romilda, Loren, and Maria lived with Loren’s grandmother in Pozzuoli, near Naples, to survive.

During World War II, the harbour and munitions plant in Pozzuoli was a frequent bombing target of the Allies. During one raid, as Loren ran to the shelter, she was struck by shrapnel and wounded in the chin. After that, the family moved to Naples, where they were taken in by distant relatives.

After the war, Loren and her family returned to Pozzuoli. Grandmother Luisa opened a pub in their living room, selling homemade cherry liquor. Villani played the piano, Maria sang and Loren waited on tables and washed dishes. The place was very popular with the American GIs stationed nearby.

When she was 14 years old, Loren entered a beauty contest in Naples and, while not winning, was selected as one of the finalists. Later she enrolled in acting class and was selected as an extra in Mervyn LeRoy’s 1951 film Quo Vadis, launching her career as a motion picture actress. She eventually for 1952′s La Favorita, her first larger role, Ponti changed her name to Sophia Loren.

Here’s a Sophia Loren Picasa gallery for you.  348 sorted images all told.

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Edwige Fenech

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Edwige Fenech (Italian pronunciation: [edˈviːdʒe feˈnɛk]) (born Edwige Sfenek; 24 December 1948) is a French-born Italian actress and film producer.

Fenech was born in Bône (now Annaba), in French Algeria to a Maltese father and Sicilian mother. From the late 1960s to early 1980s, Fenech starred in many types of European movies. She is best known for her erotic comedies, and began to work in that field in the late 1960s with Austrian director Franz Antel. Fenech also achieved fame with giallo and sex films such as Five Dolls for an August Moon, Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key and Sex with a Smile, many of which were directed by Sergio Martino.

In the 1980s, she became a television personality, typically appearing with Barbara Bouchet on a chat show on Italian television. In the mid-1990s, she was engaged to the well-known Italian industrialist Luca di Montezemolo.

After many years of work in movie production (she produced, among others, The Merchant of Venice, 2004, with Al Pacino), Fenech accepted Quentin Tarantino’s offer to star in another movie, Hostel: Part II (2007), directed by Eli Roth. A British general named Ed Fenech (played by Mike Myers) is a character in Tarantino’s 2009 film Inglourious Basterds.

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