Maria Grazia Cucinotta

Maria Grazia Cucinotta is an Italian actress who has appeared in films and on television since 1990, and she is known internationally for Il Postino and The World Is Not Enough. Born in Messina, Sicily, she started out in small television parts before landing her first movie role, as Beatrice Russo opposite Massimo Troisi in Michael Radford's Il Postino (1994). John Simon of National Review praised her work in that film. She went on to play the villain Cigar Girl in the 1999 James Bond entry The World Is Not Enough and, the same year, took the title role in an episode of The Sopranos. In 2005 she voiced Francesca on The Simpsons, and she both produced and appeared in the UNICEF charity anthology All the Invisible Children. She won the Italy-USA Foundation's America Award in 2010, and in 2012 she received a star from Toronto's Italian Walk of Fame.