Rossana Podestà

Rossana Podestà (born Carla Dora Podestà; 20 June 1934 – 10 December 2013) was an Italian actress who worked mainly in Italy from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Biography Podestà was born in Tripoli in the Italian colony of Libya. She spent her first years there, moving with her parents to Rome after World War II. At sixteen she was discovered by director Léonide Moguy during the preparation of the cast for the film Tomorrow Is Another Day; this inaugurated her film career. She participated in sixty films, both in Italy and abroad.

Marriage In Italy, she resided in Dubino (Sondrio province). She married movie producer Marco Vicario, and they later divorced. From 1980 she lived with Walter Bonatti, a journalist and mountain explorer. He died alone in 2011, aged 81, at a private clinic; its management would not allow his partner to be with him because the two were not married. On 10 December 2013, Podestà died in Rome, aged 79.

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 role in the Mexican film Rossana, she became very popular in Latin America.

Podestà also starred in Ulysses (1954), directed by Mario Camerini, and in the sixties and seventies she acted in some romantic movies, including The Sensual Man and The Swinging Confessors which led to a double page of five half-naked pictures in the US Playboy of March 1966. Under the headline "Trio Con Brio" featuring European actresses, she appeared alongside Christiane Schmidtmer (from Germany) and Shirley Anne Field (from the UK).

Her last performance was in Secrets Secrets (1985), directed by Giuseppe Bertolucci. She died on 10 December 2013.

Selected filmography

1950: Strano appuntamento - Their daughter 1951: Tomorrow Is Another Day - Stefania 1951: The Seven Dwarfs to the Rescue - Princess Snow White 1951: Cops and Robbers - Liliana Bottoni 1952: Viva il cinema! - Marisa 1952: The Angels of the District - Lisa 1952: I, Hamlet - Ofelia 1952: The Phantom Musketeer - Ornella 1952: Don Lorenzo 1953: Viva la rivista! 1953: Finishing School - Pereira 1953: Addio, figlio mio! - Elsa 1953: Rossana - Rossana 1953: Voice of Silence 1954: Ulysses - Nausicaa 1955: Le ragazze di San Frediano - Tosca 1955: Nosotros dos - María Pedrosa 1955: Non scherzare con le donne 1955: Songs of Italy 1956: Helen of Troy - Helen 1956: Playa prohibida - Isabella 1956: Santiago - Doña Isabella 1958: The Amorous Corporal - Bethi 1958: Raw Wind in Eden - Costanza Varno 1958: The Sword and the Cross - Marta 1959: Temptation - Caterina 1959: Un vaso de whisky - María 1960: Fury of the Pagans - Leonora 1961: La grande vallata 1961: Slave of Rome - Antea 1962: Alone Against Rome - Fabiola 1962: The Golden Arrow - Jamila 1963: Sodom and Gomorrah - Shuah 1963: The Virgin of Nuremberg - Mary Hunter 1964: The Naked Hours - Carla 1964: Last Plane to Baalbek - Isabel Moore 1965: Seven Golden Men - Giorgia 1966: Seven Golden Men Strike Again - Giorgia 1970: The Swinging Confessors - Silvia 1971: Man of the Year - Cocò Lampugnani 1972: L'uccello migratore - Delia Benetti 1973: The Sensual Man - Lilia 1975: Il gatto mammone - Rosalia 1976: Sex Diary - Serena 1977: Pane, burro e marmellata - Simona 1979: 7 ragazze di classe - Ivonne 1980: Sunday Lovers - Clara (segment "Armando's Notebook") 1980: Tranquille donne di campagna - Anna Maldini 1983: Hercules - Hera 1985: Secrets Secrets - Maria, Rosa's Mother (final film role)