Elsa Martinelli

Biography

Elsa Martinelli (Grosseto, 1935 – Rome, 2017) was an Italian actress and fashion model who became an international name in the 1950s and 1960s. Born in Tuscany, she built a career that moved between Hollywood and European productions, mainly Italian and French, and she shared the screen with stars such as Kirk Douglas, John Wayne and Robert Mitchum. Her career is a useful window onto the coproduction-driven cinema of that period, when Italian actresses often worked on both sides of the Atlantic.

Born Elisa Tia, she moved with her family to Rome in 1953, where the couturier Roberto Capucci spotted her and launched her in fashion. Small film parts followed, including The Red and the Black (1954), before her breakthrough in the western The Indian Fighter (1955), directed by André de Toth, after Kirk Douglas noticed her photograph in an American magazine. In 1956 she won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlin Festival for Mario Monicelli's Donatella. From the mid-1950s to the late 1960s she divided her time between the United States and Europe, working with directors including Howard Hawks, Orson Welles and Vittorio De Sica.

In her personal life she married the Count Franco Mancinelli Scotti di San Vito in 1957, with whom she had a daughter, and in 1968 she married the photographer Willy Rizzo. Her output slowed in the late 1960s, when she turned mostly to European productions in other languages. In 1970 she travelled to Peru and Chile to shoot La Araucana, directed by Julio Coll, playing Inés de Suárez. Afterwards she appeared only occasionally in Italian films and television. She co-hosted the San Remo Festival in 1971 and published her autobiography in 1995. She died in Rome in July 2017, aged 82.

Key films

• The Red and the Black (1954), by Claude Autant-Lara, a supporting role early in her career.
• The Indian Fighter (1955), by André de Toth, her breakthrough opposite Kirk Douglas.
• Hatari! (1962), by Howard Hawks, alongside John Wayne.
• The Trial (1962), by Orson Welles, an adaptation of Kafka's novel.
• The 10th Victim (1965), by Elio Petri, a satirical science-fiction film.
• Candy (1968), by Christian Marquand, with a large international cast.