Rossana Podestà

Rossana Podestà was an Italian actress whose screen career ran from the 1950s into the 1970s. Born in Tripoli, Libya, she moved to Rome after World War II. Director Léonide Moguy discovered her at sixteen while assembling the cast for Tomorrow Is Another Day, and she went on to make some sixty films in Italy and elsewhere. Her best-remembered part was Helen in Robert Wise's production Helen of Troy (1956); since she could not speak English, she memorized her lines with a voice coach. The role brought her international attention and put her opposite a young Brigitte Bardot. Mario Camerini directed her in Ulysses (1954). Her lead in the Mexican film Rossana made her widely known in Latin America. During the 1960s and 1970s she appeared in romantic pictures such as The Sensual Man and The Swinging Confessors. Giuseppe Bertolucci directed her last performance, in Secrets Secrets (1985). She died in 2013.