Florinda Bolkan

A sensual, versatile legend of arthouse and grindhouse Italian cinema, Florinda Bolkan was born Florinda Soares Bulcão in Uruburetama, Ceará, Brazil, as the youngest of three children from a Brazilian father and an Indios mother. Her father, diplomat José Pedro Soares Bulcão, died when she was 14, and she began working as a secretary to support her family while attending school and learning English and French. Eventually, she began working as a flight inspector for Varig. In 1967, she visited Rome and was introduced by producer Marina Cicogna (who would become her lover over the next 21 years) to Luchino Visconti, who finally persuaded her to pursue modelling and acting.

She quickly landed supporting roles in Crime Thief (1969), Candy (1968) (in which she played a sister to Ringo Starr) and Visconti's The Damned (1969). By this time, Florinda had chosen to use "Bolkan" as her last name, believing it to have more international appeal. Despite eventually becoming fluent in the language, she was usually dubbed in Italian due to her thick accent.

Upon beginning her new career, Bolkan quickly received acclaim as an upcoming talent: for her performance in Metti, una sera a cena (1969), she shared the Golden Plate prize from the David di Donatello Awards alongside Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting.

She also appeared in several lower-budget genre films throughout her prime, including Machine Gun McCain (1969), Un detective (1969), A Lizard in a Woman's Skin (1971)_, Don't Torture a Duckling (1972), The Master Touch (1972), Flavia, the Heretic (1974), Footprints on the Moon (1975), The Last House on the Beach (1978) and La gabbia (1985).

She would win two more David di Donatellos (for Best Actress) during her career, for The Anonymous Venetian (1970) and Cari genitori (1973).

Bolkan appeared in two highbrow Italian films that were of considerable importance on an international scale: Elio Petri's Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970) (winner of the 1970 Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Picture) and the penultimate work of Vittorio De Sica, A Brief Vacation (1973).

Aside from a few international productions, such as The Last Valley (1971), Royal Flash (1975), Atentat u Sarajevu (1975) and Some Girls (1988), Bolkan rarely worked outside of Italy.

Was one of the judges in the Miss Universe pageant in 1976.

By the late 1980s, she had largely left cinema in favour of television and stage productions (such as The Word (1978) and La piovra (1984)), although Eu Não Conhecia Tururu (2000) - her only film as actor, writer, producer and director - received favourable coverage in her home country.

Born in Brazil, she had a successful career in Italian cinema but in Brazil she worked only three time during her long career: appearing in a soap opera (A Rainha da Vida (1987), a film (Bela Donna (1998) and acting and directing in another film (Eu Não Conhecia Tururu (2000)).

By 2006, Bolkan had retired from acting, and now owns and operates the Villa Voltarina in Bracciano.