Celebrity Biographies
Alida valli
Orson Welles’ lover to the rhythm of a zither in The Third Man, Alida Valli worked with celluloid masters such as Michelangelo Antonioni, Luchino Visconti and Alfred Hitchcock.
Alida Maria Laura von Altenburger was born on May 3, 1921, in Pola, a Croatian town that at that time belonged to Italy. The daughter of an Austrian journalist and an Italian housewife, when she was a teenager she began to study dramatic art at the Centro Sperimentale di Roma, an institution set up by Mussolini to promote Italian cinema. He began in the cinema as an extra in the adaptation of El sombrero de tres picos, by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, directed by the Italian Mario Camerini , in 1936. After The Two Sergeants, he played his first leading role in the drama Manon Lescaut, although he had greatest repercussion Little Ancient World,where she was a humble girl in love with a nobleman. With this work, Alida Valli won the Volpi Cup for best actress at the Venice Festival, which made her a star in Italy. She then starred in numerous middling dramas and comedies, until she was forced to briefly retire for refusing to contribute to films she considered propaganda in the service of Mussolini. Even so, at the end of World War II, neorealist directors associated her name with the fascist regime and hardly offered her roles.
Yes, the film producer David O. Selnick noticed her, who hired her as the protagonist of The Paradine Trial, directed by Hitchcock. O. Selnick once again required her services for The Third Man, directed by Carol Reed , where Alida Valli played her best-remembered role, along with Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten .
After some minor films, such as The Tragic Mountain, with Glenn Ford , the actress ended her international tour and returned to Italy, where she was asked by Luchino Visconti to play Countess Livia Serpieri, in Senso, a crude portrait of the Austrian occupation. from Venice. Passolini gave her a prominent role in Oedipus the King, while Antonioni did her own in The Scream, where she portrayed the most disadvantaged sector of her country. And then she became the muse of Bernardo Bertolucci , who gave her roles in La estrategia de la araña, Novecento and La luna.Alida Valli continued to accumulate uneven titles in her filmography, until 2002, when she took part in the thriller Holy Week. She passed away on April 22, 2006, at her residence in Rome.