Veronica De Laurentiis - actress and author

Turned personal torment into bestselling book

Veronica De Laurentiis has become a fervent campaigner
against domestic violence because of her own experiences

The actress and author Veronica De Laurentiis, the daughter of legendary film producer Dino De Laurentiis and actress Silvana Mangano, was born on this day in 1950 in Rome.

Although she still works in film and TV, she is best known as a campaigner against domestic violence and the author of the bestselling book Rivoglio la mia vita (I Want My Life Back), which revealed details of the attacks she was subjected to in her first marriage. Her then-husband was subsequently jailed for 14 years.

Veronica De Laurentiis was cast in the blockbuster movie Waterloo - produced by her father - when she was just 18, alongside the great actors Rod Steiger and Christopher Plummer.

She married young, however, and after the birth of her first child, Giada - now well known as a TV cook in the United States - decided to suspend her acting career in order to focus on parenthood.

Her mother, the actress Silvana Mangano,
was a star of postwar Italian cinema

With her husband, she lived in Italy until after the birth of her third child, at which point they moved to America, living first in Florida, then New York and finally in Los Angeles.

They divorced four years after the birth of their fourth child, after which Veronica sustained herself by setting up a fashion design studio in Los Angeles, where she spent 12 years designing and making clothes.

At the same time she was undergoing therapy, the culmination of which was a book, published in 2006, the shocking revelations in which saw it rocket to the top of the Italian bestseller lists.

Rivoglio la mia vita not only described the violence she suffered in her marriage and the torment that followed her daughter’s revelation that she had been abused, as well as the personal guilt she felt at being unaware that it was going on.

De Laurentiis also wrote about her mother’s depression and the suicide attempt that she helped her father avert at the age of 14, but also about her life in the family villa near the Via Appia Antica in Rome and the aggressive, controlling nature of her father, not only over her mother’s career but her own.

Dino De Laurentiis, who died in 2010, opposed the publication of the book, telling Veronica she should not “wash the family’s linen in public” but she believed she had to go ahead.

Veronica's father, the film producer Dino
De Laurentiis, opposed her book

Nowadays, married again, she has returned to acting and does some television work, but devotes much time to touring Italy speaking to women about rape, abuse, and the importance of speaking out.

She wrote a second book - Riprenditi La Tua Vita – Le otto chiavi di Veronica  (Take Back Your Life - Veronica’s Eight Keys), published in 2009.

She set up a group in Los Angeles in which she encourages women to come forward and tell their stories and began a foundation to fight domestic violence in Italy.  The first “Silvana Mangano Centre” for the victims of domestic abuse, named in honour of her mother, opened in 2011 in Formia in Lazio, midway between Rome and Naples.

Formia is now a modern port on the coast between Rome
and Naples but has a rich history

Travel tip:

Situated on the Tyrrhenian Sea coast between Rome and Naples, in Lazio but close to the border with Campania, Formia is a port town with that was a popular resort with the wealthy of Imperial Rome. One of its major attractions is the Tomba di Cicerone, a Roman mausoleum just outside the town which is said to have been built for the great Roman orator Cicero, who was reportedly assassinated on the Appian Way outside the town in 43 BC. Formia is also home to the Cisternone Romano, an underground reservoir built by the Romans. testament to Roman ingenuity.  Other remains include the towers of the forts of Mola and Castellone, once two neighbouring villages. The generally modern feel of much of the resort and harbour today is down to a bombardment suffered during the Second World War, when Formia was a point on the German army’s Gustav Line and suffered heavy damage during the Allied invasion.

The Via Antica Appia passes through
the ancient port of Terracina

Travel tip:

The Via Appia Antica - the Appian Way - is the ancient Roman road that linked Rome with the port of Brindisi some 550km (340 miles) away in the southeast corner of the peninsula. Beginning at Porto San Sebastiano, two miles south of the Colosseum, while some of the road is open to traffic other sections are preserved in their original form, passing through pleasant parkland, and there are numerous catacombs, tombs and other ruins along the way.  It offers a quieter experience to visitors to Rome, away from the inevitably thronged centre. From Rome, the road followed a straight route to Terracina, followed the coast through Formia and then diverted inland through Capua and Benevento before crossing the peninsula to Taranto and on to Brindisi.


More reading:

Dino De Laurentiis - how a pasta trader from Naples helped put Italian cinema on the map

How Silvana Mangano shook off her sex-symbol image

Vittorio Gassman - Italy's 'Olivier'

Also on this day:

1898: The birth of opera singer Carlo Tagliabue

1936: The birth of operatic baritone Renato Bruson

1970: The birth of tragic cycling star Marco Pantani


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Gina Lollobrigida – actress

Movie star who became photo journalist

Gina Lollobrigida at the peak of her
fame in the 1960s

Film star Gina Lollobrigida was born Luigina Lollobrigida on this day in 1927 in Subiaco in Lazio.

At the height of her popularity as an actress in the 1950s and early 1960s she was regarded as a sex symbol all over the world.

In later life she worked as a photo journalist and has supported Italian and American good causes. In 2013 she sold her jewellery collection and donated the money she raised, in the region of five million dollars, to fund stem cell therapy research.

One of four daughters of a furniture manufacturer and his wife, as a young girl, Lollobrigida did some modelling, entered beauty contests and had minor roles in Italian films. She studied painting and sculpture at school and claimed in later life that she became an actress "by mistake".

When she was 20 she entered the Miss Italia competition and came third. The publicity she received helped her get parts in European films but she turned down the chance to work in America after initially agreeing a seven-year contract with the American entrepreneur Howard Hughes. After she refused the terms of her contract, it took nine years for a legal dispute to be resolved.

She received a BAFTA nomination and won a Nastro d’Argento award for her performance in Bread, Love and Dreams (Pane, amore e fantasia), a comedy directed by Luigi Comencini, in 1953. She later starred in the English language film Beat the Devil, which was shot in Italy, and she also worked in the French film industry.

Lollobrigida's looks brought her much work 
but she was also a talanted actress

Her appearance in The World’s Most Beautiful Woman (1955), a French-Italian comedy also known as Beautiful But Dangerous led to her receiving the David di Donatello - the award presented by the Academy of Italian Cinema - for Best Actress. She played the part of Italian soprano Lina Cavalieri and sang arias from Tosca herself.

In the 1950s and '60s, her talent and vivacious good looks put her in demand with the major studios and she was cast alongside many of the big box-offices names of the era, including Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Anthony Quinn, Yves Montand, Marcello Mastroianni, Frank Sinatra, Yul Brynner, Sean Connery and Rock Hudson.

More awards came in the shape of a Golden Globe for the romantic comedy Come September (1961), a Nastro d'Argento and David di Donatello awards for the historical drama Venere Imperiale (1962), and a third David di Donatello for another comedy, Buona Sera, Mrs Campbell (1968), which also starred Shelley Winters, Phil Silvers, Peter Lawford and Telly Savalas. 

In the mid 1980s her role in the American television series Falcon Crest earned her a Golden Globe nomination. By then, she was making only occasional movie appearances, her last coming in 1997.

At the end of the 1970s Lollobrigida started working as a photojournalist as well as continuing with acting. She obtained an exclusive interview with Cuban leader Fidel Castro and also photographed many famous film stars, as well as publishing a number of books of her photographs.

Married twice, she has one son, Andrea Milko, by her first marriage to a Slovenian physician. In retirement, she divided her time between her country house in Sicily, her home in Via Appia in Rome and her villa in Monte Carlo.

UPDATE: Gina Lollobrigida died in Rome in January, 2023 at the age of 95.

The Abbey of Santa Scolastica near Subiaco, Lazio,
home town of actress Gina Lollobrigida

Travel tip:

Subiaco, where Gina Lollobrigida was born, is a town in Lazio, about 40km (25 miles) to the east of Tivoli, alongside the Aniene river. It is famous for its two ancient abbeys, St Benedict’s and Santa Scolastica. The area has had a monastic community since the sixth century. The first printed books in Italy were produced on a printing press set up in the town in the 15th century.  Subiaco is also the birthplace of 16th century femme fatale Lucrezia Borgia.

Stretches of the original Via Appia are
preserved as the Via Appia Antica

Travel tip:

Gina Lollobrigida’s home in Rome is in Via Appia, the Appian Way, which is one of the earliest and most important of the Roman roads. It connects Rome to Brindisi in southern Italy. The road is named after Appius Claudius Caecus, who directed the construction of its first section in 312 BC after it was deemed that a road was needed to ease the movement of military supplies and troops to and from Rome. Stretching for approximately 400 miles (645km), it was the first long road made for this purpose. Today, following the route is an ideal way to see several major monuments of ancient Rome, including the Tomb of Priscilla, the Catacombs of Callixtus and St Sebastian, the Circus of Maxentius, the baths of Capo di Bove and the Villa dei Quintili. Today a modern road, the Villa Appia Nuova, runs close to the original route, while there are many stretches of the original route preserved, known ad the Villa Appia Antica.

Also on this day:

1742: The death of monk and philosopher Luigi Guido Grandi

1914: The birth of car designer Giuseppe 'Nuccio' Bertone

(Photo of Gina Lollobrigida by Ivo Lollobrigida CC BY-SA 3.0)
(Photo of the Abbey of Santa Scolastica by Livioandronico2013 CC BY-SA 4.0)

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