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Alida Valli

Alida Valli built a career that moved freely across Italian cinema, Hollywood productions, European art films, horror and the stage. Born in Pola, Istria—now Pula, Croatia—in 1921, she grew up speaking Slovene, Italian and German, and was also fluent in Serbo-Croatian, French and English. That linguistic range proved especially useful in international productions, where she could perform opposite actors in their own language before dubbing herself for Italian soundtracks. Valli began appearing in films in 1934 and found an early popular success with Mille lire al mese in 1939. Her dramatic performance in Mario Soldati’s Piccolo mondo antico brought her a special Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival. During the Second World War, she also starred in Noi Vivi and Addio Kira!, adaptations of Ayn Rand’s We the Living that were eventually withdrawn from Italian cinemas after their anti-fascist implications became apparent. A contract with David Selznick took Valli into English-language films. She appeared with Gregory Peck in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Paradine Case, then joined Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten in Carol Reed’s The Third Man. In America she was often credited simply as “Valli,” a marketing choice she openly disliked. She later secured release from Selznick’s restrictive contract and returned to Europe in the early 1950s. There, her work continued to deepen and diversify. In Luchino Visconti’s Senso, she played a Venetian countess caught between patriotic conviction and a destructive affair. She later appeared in Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Oedipus Rex, Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Spider’s Stratagem and Novecento, and Dario Argento’s Suspiria. Alongside film, she maintained a substantial stage career and managed a theatrical company producing Broadway plays in Italy. Valli’s final film role came in Semana Santa in 2002. Five years earlier, the Venice International Film Festival had recognised her career with a Golden Lion.