Valli, Alida (1921–2006)

Italian actress. Name variations: sometimes acted under name Valli. Born Alida Maria Laura von Altenburger, May 31, 1921, in Pola, Istria, Italy (now Pula, Croatia), to an Austrian journalist father and an Italian mother (killed 1945); died May 31, 2006, in Rome, Italy; briefly studied at Rome's Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia; m. Oscar de Mejo (pianist-composer), in 1944 (sep.).

Made film debut in T'ameròsempre (1933); her haunting beauty and natural charm soon made her a star, one of Italy's highest paid young actresses; during WWII, refused to continue working for the Fascist film industry and was forced into hiding; after war, appeared in popular American films, The Miracle of the Bells (1948), The Paradine Case (1948), and The Third Man (1949), for which she won international acclaim; career suffered a brief setback (1953), when she served as an alibi for a politician implicated in the unsolved murder of Wilma Montesi; other films include Eugenia Grandet (1946), The White Tower (1950), Walk Softly Stranger (1950), Ultimo Incontro (1951), Siamo Donne (1953), Les Bijoutiers du Clair de Lune (The Night Heaven Fell, 1958), Les Yeux sans Visage (The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus, 1960), Les Dialogue des Carmélites (1960), El Vale de Las Spades (The Castilian, 1963), Edipo Re (Oedipus Rex, 1967), 1900 (1976), The Cassandra Crossing (1977), Suspiria (1977), La Luna (1979), Inferno (1979), Aspern (1982), Segreti Segreti (1984), Hitchcock (1985), A Month By the Lake (1994), Il dolce rumore della vita (1999) and La Grande strada azzura (2001).

See also Women in World History.