ProfileMarisa Pavan (born Maria Luisa Pierangeli; 19 June 1932) is an Italian-born actress who first became known as the twin sister of film star Pier Angeli (Anna Maria Pierangeli) before achieving success in films on her own. BiographyThe daughter of a construction engineer, Marisa Pavan had no dramatic training when she signed a contract with Paramount at age 19. Her film debut came in What Price Glory (1952). Pavan's breakthrough came in the film The Rose Tattoo (1955) as Anna Magnani's daughter. Her performance earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for Pavan. She also won the Golden Globe Award for (Best Supporting Actress) for her performance in the film. Pavan has co-starred in films such as Diane (1956), The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956), The Midnight Story (1957) and John Paul Jones (1959). She also played Abishag in King Vidor's biblical epic Solomon and Sheba (1959). Her later films included A Slightly Pregnant Man (1973), Antoine and Sebastian (1974) and the television miniseries The Moneychangers (1976). In 1985, she portrayed the role of Chantal Dubujak on Ryan's Hope. On March 27, 1956, Pavan married French actor Jean-Pierre Aumont in Santa Barbara, California; the couple divorced a few years later and then remarried and remained together until his death in 2001. They had two sons: Jean-Claude (b. 1957) and Patrick (b. 1960) Further interest
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ProfileIsabella Fiorella Elettra Giovanna Rossellini (born 18 June 1952) is an Italian-American actress, author, philanthropist, and former model. The daughter of the Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman and the Italian film director Roberto Rossellini, she is noted for her successful tenure as a Lancôme model, and for her roles in films such as Blue Velvet (1986) and Death Becomes Her (1992). Rossellini received a Golden Globe Award nomination for her performance in Crime of the Century (1996). BiographyRossellini was born in Rome, the daughter of Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman, who was of Swedish and German descent, and Italian director Roberto Rossellini, who was born in Rome from a family originally from Pisa, Tuscany. She has three siblings from her mother: her fraternal twin sister Isotta Rossellini, an adjunct professor of Italian literature. While growing up in Rome, Italy or residing in New York City, Isabella Rossellini has always lived near her; a brother, Robertino Ingmar Rossellini; and a half-sister, Pia Lindström from her mother's first marriage with Petter Lindström. She has four other siblings from her father's two other marriages. Rossellini was raised in Rome, as well as in Santa Marinella and Paris. She underwent an operation for appendicitis at the age of five. At 11, she was diagnosed with scoliosis. In order to correct it, she had to undergo an 18-month ordeal of painful stretchings, body casts and surgery on her spine using pieces of one of her shin bones. Consequently, she has incision scars on her back and shin. At 19, she went to New York City, where she attended Finch College, while working as a translator and a RAI television reporter, one of his interviewees was filmmaker Martin Scorsese, with whom she would marry in 1979. At the age of 28, her modeling career began, when she was photographed by Bruce Weber for British Vogue and by Bill King for American Vogue. During her career, she has also worked with many other renowned photographers, including Richard Avedon, Steven Meisel, Helmut Newton, Peter Lindbergh, Norman Parkinson, Eve Arnold, Francesco Scavullo, Annie Leibovitz, Denis Piel, and Robert Mapplethorpe. Her image has appeared on such magazines as Marie Claire, Harper's Bazaar, Vanity Fair, and Elle. In March 1988, an exhibition dedicated to photographs of her, called Portrait of a Woman, was held at the Musee d'Art Moderne in Paris. Rossellini's modeling career led her into the world of cosmetics, when she became the exclusive spokesmodel for the French cosmetics brand Lancôme in 1982, replacing Nancy Dutiel in the United States and Carol Alt in Europe. The same year, her marriage to Scorsese ended. In 1983, Rossellini was married to Jon Wiedemann, with whom she has a daughter, Elettra Rossellini Wiedemann (born 1983). The marriage ended three years later in 1986. Rossellini made her film debut with a brief appearance as a nun opposite her mother in the 1976 film A Matter of Time. Her first role was the 1979 film Il Prato, but his most memorable role was as the tortured nightclub singer Dorothy Vallens in the David Lynch film Blue Velvet, in which she also contributed her own singing. She received a 1987 Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead for her role in Blue Velvet. Other than films, Rossellini also played in a few TV series such as Friends, Alias, and received a Golden Globe and Emmy Award nomination for her performances in two of them. In October 1992, Rossellini modelled for Madonna's controversial book Sex. Rossellini also appeared in Madonna's music video for her successful Top 5 hit song "Erotica", released in autumn 1992. In 1996, when she was 43, she was removed as the face of Lancôme for being "too old". Next year, Rossellini published her self-described fictional memoir, Some of Me (1997). The memoir would be followed by another two books: Looking at Me (2002), and In the name of the Father, the Daughter and the Holy Spirits: Remembering Roberto Rossellini (2006). In 2004 Rossellini became the inaugural brand ambassador for the Italian Silversea Cruises company , and she appeared in print ads and on their website. Barbara Muckermann, the senior vice-president of worldwide marketing and communications in 2004, said at the time of the announcement, "Isabella is the ideal personification of Silversea's exclusive standard of elegance, glamour and sophistication." In 2007, Rossellini Rossellini enrolled at Hunter College in New York to study animal behavior, and the Sundance Channel commissioned her to contribute a short-film project to the environmental program The Green(Later Green Porno) Debuting in 2008, the first series of Green Porno had over 4 million views on YouTube and two further seasons were produced; there are 18 episodes in the series. Rossellini worked with a small budget for Green Porno and she was responsible for the scripts, helped to design the creatures, directed the episodes, and is the primary actor in the series. In each of the episodes, she acts out the mating rituals and reproductive behaviour of various animals while commentary is played. Rossellini said that her research has influenced her perspective on societal notions of beauty: "If you look at nature, there is no perfection. Everything is always evolving and adapting according to whatever the environmental pressure. The more diversity there is, the more things are going to survive." Green Porno was followed by two other animal-themed television productions: Seduce Me: The Spawn of Green Porno and Mammas. As with Green Porno, Rossellini wrote, directed and acted in the series; she is also a producer of the series. Rossellini also brought her Green Porno on stage at The Gateway Performing Arts Center of Suffolk County, in Bellport, New York, the south shore Long Island village where she is a local organic farmer. The show was called "Link Link Circus" (as in Ring Ring), performed by Rossellini, her dog, Peter Pan, and some puppets. In 2016, at the age of 63, Rossellini was rehired by Lancôme's new female CEO, Francoise Lehmann, as a global brand ambassador for the company, which dismissed her as she was too old 20 years ago.
Original name: Diana Freeman-Mitford birth place: Belgravia, Westminster, London, UK birth date: 17 June 1910 zodiac sign: death place: Paris, France death date: 11 August 2003 Height: Weight: Measurements: Occupation: Languages: English, French, German Profile of Diana MitfordDiana Mitford was one of the Mitford sisters born in the British upper class Mitford family. She was first married to Bryan Walter Guinness, heir to the barony of Moyne, and upon her divorce from him married Sir Oswald Mosley, 6th Baronet of Ancoats, leader of the British Union of Fascists. This her second marriage took place at the home of Joseph Goebbels in 1936, with Adolf Hitler as guest of honour. Subsequently, her involvement with Fascist political causes resulted in three years' internment during the Second World War. She later moved to Paris and enjoyed some success as a writer. In the 1950s she contributed diaries to Tatler and edited the magazine The European. In 1977, she published her autobiography, A Life of Contrasts, and two more biographies in the 1980s. She was also a regular book reviewer for Books & Bookmen and later at The Evening Standard in the 1990s. Biography of Diana MitfordDiana Mitford was the fourth child and third daughter of David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale (1878–1958), and his wife, Sydney (1880–1963), daughter of Thomas Gibson Bowles, MP. She was a first cousin of Clementine Churchill, second cousin of Angus Ogilvy, and first cousin, twice removed, of Bertrand Russell. Diana Mitford was born in Belgravia and raised in the country estate of Batsford Park, then from the age of 10 at the family home, Asthall Manor, in Oxfordshire, and later at Swinbrook House, a home her father had built in the village of Swinbrook. She was educated at home by a series of governesses except for a six-month period in 1926 when she was sent to a day school in Paris. At the age of 18, shortly after her presentation at Court, she became secretly engaged to Bryan Walter Guinness, an Irish aristocrat, writer and brewing heir, who would inherit the barony of Moyne. They married on 30 January 1929, and the couple had an income of £20,000 a year (the equivalent of £1,132,535.70 in 2016, adjusted for inflation), an estate at Biddesden in Wiltshire, and houses in London and Dublin. The couple was well known for hosting aristocratic society events involving the Bright Young People. The writer Evelyn Waugh exclaimed that her beauty "ran through the room like a peal of bells", and he dedicated the novel Vile Bodies, a satire of the Roaring Twenties, to the couple. Her portrait was painted by Augustus John, Pavel Tchelitchew and Henry Lamb. "She was the nearest thing to Botticelli's Venus that I have ever seen.¨ Diana Mitford and her first husband Bryan Guinness had two sons, Jonathan (b. 1930) and Desmond (b. 1931). In February 1932, Diana Mitford met Sir Oswald Mosley at a garden party at the home of the society hostess Emerald Cunard. He soon became leader of the newly formed British Union of Fascists, and Diana's lover. Diana left her husband, 'moving with a skeleton staff of nanny, cook, house-parlourmaid and lady's maid to a house at 2 Eaton Square, round the corner from Mosley's flat', and was briefly estranged from most of her family. Her affair and eventual marriage to Mosley also strained relationships with her sisters. Nancy Mitford, sister of Diana Mitford satirised Mosley and his beliefs in her novel Wigs on the Green published in 1935, and the relations between the sisters became strained to non-existent until the mid-1940s. Diana Mitford and Oswald Mosley wed in secret on 6 October 1936 in Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels' drawing room. After the war, the couple first lived in Ireland then settled permanently in France, at the Temple de la Gloire (built in 1801 to honour the French victory of December 1800 at Hohenlinden, near Munich) , a Palladian temple in Orsay, southwest of Paris, and became neighbours then close friends of Duke and Duchess of Windsor, who lived in the neighbouring town Gif-sur-Yvette. The Duchess of Windsor, upon seeing the "Temple de la Gloire" for the first time, was said to have remarked, "Oh, it's charming, charming but where do you live?" Once again Diana Mitford and her husband were well known for entertaining, but were barred from all functions at the British Embassy. During their time in France, the Mosleys quietly went through another marriage ceremony. Mosley was also shunned in the British media for a period after the war and the couple established their own publishing company, Euphorion Books, named after a character in Goethe's Faust. Diana initially translated Goethe's Faust. Other notable books published by Euphorion under her aegis included La Princesse de Clèves (translated by Nancy, 1950), Niki Lauda's memoirs (1985), and Hans-Ulrich Rudel's memoirs, Stuka Pilot. Diana also edited the fascist cultural magazine The European for six years, and to this magazine she herself sometimes contributed material. She provided articles, book reviews, and regular diary entries. In 1965, Diana Mitford was commissioned to write the regular column Letters from Paris for the Tatler. She was an avid reader and critic of contemporary literature, reviewing for many publications, such as the London Evening Standard, The Spectator, The Daily Mail, The Times, The Sunday Times and Books & Bookmen. She specialised in reviewing autobiographical and biographical accounts as well as the occasional novel. Characteristically she would provide commentary of her own experiences with and knowledge of the subject of the book she was reviewing. She was the lead literary reviewer for the London Evening Standard during A.N. Wilson's tenure as literary editor. She also wrote the foreword and introduction of Nancy Mitford: A Memoir by Harold Acton. She produced her own two books of memoirs: A Life of Contrasts (1977), and Loved Ones (1985). The latter is a collection of pen portraits of close relatives and friends such as the writer Evelyn Waugh among others. In 1980, she released The Duchess of Windsor, a biography. In 1989 Diana Mitford was invited to appear on the BBC Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs with Sue Lawley, Her choices of music to be played on Desert Island Discs were: Symphony No. 41 (Mozart), "Casta Diva" from Norma by Vincent Bellini, "Ode to Joy" by Beethoven, Die Walküre and Liebestod by Wagner, "L'amour est un oiseau rebelle" from Carmen of Bizet, "A Whiter Shade of Pale" by Procol Harum and Polonaise in F-sharp minor by Chopin. In 1998, due to her advancing age, Diana Mitford moved out of the Temple de la Gloire and into a Paris apartment. Temple de la Gloire was subsequently sold for £1 million in 2000. Throughout much of her life, particularly after her years in prison, she was afflicted by regular bouts of migraines. In 1981, she underwent successful surgery to remove a brain tumour. She convalesced at Chatsworth House, the residence of her sister Deborah. In the early 1990s, she was also successfully treated for skin cancer. In later life, she also suffered from deafness. Diana Mitford died in Paris in August 2003, aged 93. Her cause of death was given as complications related to a stroke she had suffered a week earlier, but reports later surfaced that she had been one of the many elderly fatalities of the heat wave of 2003 in mostly non-air-conditioned Paris. Diana Mitford was buried at St Mary's Churchyard, Swinbrook, Oxfordshire,alongside her sisters. Further readingArticles Books Diana Mitford is one of the surprise discoveries of the phenomenally successful collection of Mitford letters published for Christmas 2007. Like her five literary sisters, Diana Mitford has written widely not only on her own fascinating, controversial life, but has recorded her intimately-placed observations of friends who also happened to have been leading political and social figures of the day. The majority of these scintillating articles circulated privately to a small group of people, and are published for the very first time in this volume. The hilarious autobiography of the most glamorous of the Bright Young Things. Diana Mitford describes in the inimitable Mitford way how it came about that both Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler adored her, and Evelyn Waugh and Oswald Mosley fell in love with her. Before Diana Mitford's disgrace as a social pariah, she was a celebrated member of the Bright Young Things, moving at the centre of 1920s and '30s London high society. She was a muse to many: Helleu painted her, James Lees-Milne worshipped her, Evelyn Waugh dedicated a book to her and Winston Churchill nicknamed her 'Dina-mite'. As the young wife of Bryan Guinness, heir to the Guinness brewing empire, she lived a gilded life until fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley turned her head. Unpublished letters, diaries and archives bring an unknown Diana to life, creating a portrait of a beautiful woman whose charm and personality enthralled all who met her, but the discourse of her life would ultimately act as a cautionary tale.This groundbreaking biography reveals the woman behind the myth. |
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