Pier Angeli

Anna Maria Pierangeli (19 June 1932 – 10 September 1971 ), known internationally by the stage name Pier Angeli, was an Italian actress, model and singer.

Anna Maria Pierangeli was born to Enrichetta (née Romiti) and Luigi Pierangeli in Cagliari, Sardinia in 1932.

She had a fraternal twin sister, actress Marisa Pavan.

Angeli spent World War II in Rome; she was ten when the Nazis occupied Rome, experiencing both food shortages and bomb shelters.

She was deeply affected by her experiences during the war, recalling later: "What was in the world, I didn't want to know."

She won the Nastro d'Argento for Best Actress for her debut role in the 1950 film Tomorrow Is Too Late, and subsequently won a Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actress for her performance in the American film Teresa (1951).

Angeli made her film debut at the age of 16 with Vittorio De Sica's Italian film, Domani è troppo tardi (1950) after being spotted by director Léonide Moguy and De Sica while studying arts in Rome.

Her work was so impressive that she won the Nastro d'Argento for Best Actress, and caught the eye of MGM producers, who offered her a contract with the studio.

Under contract to MGM throughout the 1950s, she appeared in a series of films, including The Light Touch with Stewart Granger and The Devil Makes Three with Gene Kelly.

Plans for a film of Romeo and Juliet with her and Marlon Brando fell through when a British-Italian production was announced.

According to Kirk Douglas' autobiography The Ragman's Son, he and Angeli were engaged in the 1950s after meeting on the set of the film The Story of Three Loves (1953).

Angeli also had a passionate romantic relationship with James Dean.

In the United States, Angeli was typecast in "European ingénue" roles, and notably played romantic leading ladies in The Light Touch (1951), The Devil Makes Three (1952), The Story of Three Loves (1953), The Silver Chalice (1954), and Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956).

MGM launched her in Teresa (1951), her first American film, which also saw the film debuts of Rod Steiger and John Ericson.

Reviews for this performance compared her to Greta Garbo, and she won the New Star of the Year–Actress Golden Globe.

While filming The Story of Three Loves (1953), Angeli began a relationship with costar Kirk Douglas.

She next appeared in Sombrero, in which she replaced an indisposed Ava Gardner, then Flame and the Flesh (1954).

After discovering Leslie Caron, another European ingénue, MGM lent Angeli to other studios.

She went to Warner Bros. for both The Silver Chalice (1954), which marked the debut of Paul Newman, and the French-language musical Oh No, Mam'zelle (Mam'zelle Nitouche), also 1954), co-starring alongside Fernandel. For Paramount, she was in contention for the role of Anna Magnani's daughter in The Rose Tattoo (1955), but the role went to Marisa Pavan, her twin sister. MGM lent her to Columbia for Port Afrique (1956), where she got to showcase her real singing voice. She returned to MGM for Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956) as Paul Newman's long-suffering wife (Angeli's former lover, James Dean, was to play the starring role, which went to Newman after Dean's death). Newman would later say of her: "The most beautiful Italian actress of the century.

She was an extremely complex and gifted woman.

They met while she was shooting The Silver Chalice (1954) and he was shooting East of Eden (1955), on an adjoining Warner lot.

Elia Kazan, the director of East of Eden (1955), remembered hearing Dean and Angeli loudly having sex in Dean's dressing room.

Much against her will, she was forced to break it off, mainly because her mother was not happy with their relationship because Dean was not Catholic.

It was so unfortunate that the roles she was asked to play rarely demanded what I know she had to offer." She then appeared in The Vintage (1957) and finished her MGM contract in Merry Andrew (1958) starring alongside Danny Kaye. She was in consideration to play the character of Rima in, Green Mansions (1959), a character she had long wanted to play. Instead she played the part for the July 1954 issue of Life Magazine, shot by Allan Grant. In 1959, she released an album called Italia con Pier Angeli in which she sings in English and Italian. One reviewer called her singing voice "warm and surprisingly rich." She also continued to be hired for modelling jobs well into the 1960s.

She was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress for her role opposite Richard Attenborough in the British film The Angry Silence (1960).

Off-screen, Angeli was known for her high-profile romantic affairs with actors Kirk Douglas and James Dean, and later her tumultuous marriage to singer Vic Damone.

She died at the age of 39 of a barbiturate overdose.

Her twin sister Marisa Pavan, was also an actress.

During the 1960s and until 1970, Angeli lived and worked in Britain and Europe, and was often screen-credited under her birth name, Anna Maria Pierangeli.

She starred in French, Italian and English-language movies throughout the 1960s.

Her performance in The Angry Silence (1960), starring alongside her friend Richard Attenborough, was nominated for a Best Foreign Actress BAFTA, and she was reunited with Stewart Granger for Sodom and Gomorrah (1963), in which she played Lot's wife.

For example, In 1960, Angeli met Serge Gainsbourg in a nightclub.

On a piece of paper she scribbled in French: "J’adore 'L’eau à la bouche', ça me donne l’eau à la bouche," and slipped it into one of Gainsbourg's pockets.

He treasured this relic, and her gesture had the effect of motivating him to persevere in romantic songwriting.

She had a brief role in the war epic Battle of the Bulge (1965).

Angeli worked in Israel, and was top-billed, for Every Bastard a King (1968), about events during the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War the previous year.

She was under serious consideration for a part in, The Godfather (1972), but died before shooting began.

Angeli was fluent in Italian and English, and near fluent in French.

She was good friends with Debbie Reynolds, Louis Jourdan, and Richard Attenborough.

Because she travelled so much, she encountered many artists throughout her life.