Eleonora Rossi Drago

Eleonora Rossi Drago was an Italian actress whose career spanned roughly two decades of the 1950s and 1960s, playing scores of princesses and temptresses in Italian films. She grew up near Genoa, Italy, worked as a department store mannequin and designed couture clothing, then took fourth place in the Miss Italy contest and moved to Rome, where she began landing small film roles in 1949. Luigi Comencini gave her early breaks in Behind Closed Shutters (1951) and La tratta delle bianche (1952), and in 1955 she won praise on the stage playing Helena in Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. That same year brought her finest screen work, Michelangelo Antonioni's Le Amiche (1955). Violent Summer (1959) earned her a Silver Ribbon from Italian film journalists and a best actress prize at the Mar del Plata festival in Argentina. Later credits included David and Goliath (1960) and The Bible: In the Beginning... (1966).