Eleonora Giorgi

Eleonora Giorgi (21 October 1953 – 3 March 2025) was an Italian actress, screenwriter, and film director. She gained prominence in the 1970s and 1980s, starring in a variety of Italian films, particularly in the comedy and drama genres. Giorgi first gained attention with her roles in erotic and giallo films before transitioning to mainstream cinema, where she became a popular figure in Italian comedy, working with directors such as Pasquale Festa Campanile and Carlo Verdone.

In 1982, she won the David di Donatello Award for Best Actress for her performance in Borotalco, one of her most acclaimed roles. Beyond acting, Giorgi has also worked as a screenwriter and director, making her directorial debut in 2003.

Giorgi was born in Rome, Italy on 21 October 1953. Her father was of Italian and English origin. Her mother was of Italian and Hungarian origin.

She made her film debut in a minor role in Paolo Cavara's horror film Black Belly of the Tarantula (1971) and subsequently appeared in nearly fifty films, mostly in prominent roles. She first starred in Domenico Paolella's Story of a Cloistered Nun (1973), an important nunsploitation, at age eighteen. She then took part in The Kiss, a fantasy drama directed by Mario Lanfranchi, and in erotic comedies such as Salvatore Samperi's La sbandata (1974), in which she plays near Domenico Modugno and Luciana Paluzzi, Luciano Salce's Alla mia cara mamma nel giorno del suo compleanno (1974), Pasquale Festa Campanile's The Sex Machine (U.S. title: Love and Energy) (1975) and Gianluigi Calderone's Appassionata, that definitively gained her the public acclaim.

Roles in films like Franco Brusati's To Forget Venice (1979), Dario Argento's Inferno (1980), Nino Manfredi's Portrait of a Woman, Nude (1981), and Liliana Cavani's Beyond the Door (1982) are some of her most known and remarkable dramatic performances but in the beginning of the eighties, Giorgi decided to rejoin comedy. She's near Adriano Celentano in Velvet Hands and Grand Hotel Excelsior; for her performance in Carlo Verdone's Talcum Powder (1982), she won the Nastro d'Argento award and David di Donatello award for Best Actress.

In 2003, Giorgi wrote and directed her first film Uomini & donne, amori & bugie (U.S. title: Love, Lies, Kids... & Dogs), with Ornella Muti.

In 1974 Giorgi lost her boyfriend, fellow actor Alessandro Momo, to a motorcycle accident.

Giorgi was married from 1979 to 1983 to film producer and publisher Angelo Rizzoli, with whom she had a son, Andrea (born 1980). In 1991 she had another son, Paolo, by actor Massimo Ciavarro, to whom she was married from 1993 to 1996.