Biography

Following information courtesy Giuseppe Caruso:

Valeria was born on Oct. 22 1966 in Naples, Italy

She is the second child of a famous Italian scholar and a young Greek painter. Her brother is a musician and their uncle Enzo Golino is a famous journalist. Her grand-father owned Hotel "Bella Napoli" where her family lived. When her parents parted she lived 3 years in Athens with the mother and other 3 in Neaples with the father; her grand-father had sold the hotel. Her dream was to become a heart specialist but after 1.st year of high school she,at age 16, went to live in her uncle's home in Rome where she worked as a model for advertisements, especially for underwear thanks to her beatiful, flat belly. Seems like her first steps in model carrier began in Athens! So she has left her studies, but her father had given her the books of Marcel Proust to read. Soon she began to move continously in her friends' homes, especially in the popular distric of Trastevere in Rome. She feels herself to be a ragged Gipsy but has a preference for Armani's clothes and often wears Dolce & Gabbana's ones. She likes Jazz music and Eastern European movies.

She is 170 cm. tall, weighs 50 kg. and her measurements are 80-60-90.

Her Italian agency is: Carol Levi e Company V. Carducci 10 Roma 00187 RM Italy.

She has no experiences in theatre, and hadn't studied performing arts at all. "The Man I Love" in Hot Shots! is her only experience in singing.... So Valeria left after the 1.st year of high school (in Italy high school is not compulsory) working as a model in Rome (maybe in Milan too). 

With the help of relatives she met Director Lina Wertmüller at a party and was recruited for her first movie "Scherzo del destino in agguato dietro l'angolo come un brigante di strada", aka "Lo scherzo". In English the title is "A Joke of Destiny, Lying in Wait Around the Corner Like a Bandit" aka "Joke of Destiny": it's 1983. Wertmüller is famous for her very long titles and for her glasses. The cast is all-Italian, the most famous player is Ugo Tognazzi, the movie takes place in Rome and Valeria plays Tognazzi daughter, Adalgisa De Andreiis.

The next year Valeria began to work with Hollywood stars. Ben Gazzara has the leading role in "Figlio mio infinitamente caro..." ("My Dearest Son") that Director Valentino Orsini make in his town, Pisa. Valeria plays Francesca, the fianceé of Gazzara's son. The Internet Movie Data Base has revealed to me that the US production, "Blind Date" aka "Deadly Seduction" by Nico Mastorakis with Kristie Alley: Valeria is a girl in bikini.

In 1985 there are another two movies. One is by Filippo Ottoni "Asilo di Polizia" (in English "Detective School Dropouts" aka "Dumb Dicks" aka "Private Detectives"): David Landsberg and Lorin Dreyfuss are two US detective get involved in the war between two Italian criminal families:
the one of Caterina (Valeria's role) the other of her boy-friend: the Italian place are Rome, Pisa and Venice. Not very surprisingly, this movie is releasedin  the Italian theaters only in 1986, with the poster crying it is the movie that has discovered Valeria. The other movie in 1985 is a low-budget one by Peter Del Monte

Now the tale: in the home of actress Nadia Cassini Valeria meets Photographer Roberto Granata (his pictorial of a teen-ager Nastassia Kinski is history): she is in a cast after an awful car accident. A month after they meet again and Granata takes some black & white pictures. Some months after Director Francesco "Citto" Maselli,Secretary of Italian Filmakers' Union see these shots and chooses Valeria for his next movie "Storia d'amore". In this movie Valeria has the leading role of Bruna Assecondati, a poor cleaning lady in Rome with two lovers. In 1986 at Venice Cinema Festival the movie wins the Jury Special Prix, Valeria the Best Actress Prize: she is 20 and does not have an appropriate and expensive dress, according to the criticians (Italian criticians are the worst plague for Italian cinema). Director Giuliano Montaldo is wacthing at the cerimony on TV and casts Valeria in his next film.

In the same 1986 Valeria had played in a French-Italian co-production: "Last Summer in Tangiers" by Alexander Arcady. The place is Tangiers in 1956, in the very previous day before Morocco indipendancy: in the prologue (10 years before) a girl, Claudia Marchetti, survives to the slaughter of her family. So Claudia, played by Valeria, comes back for revenge and try to let fall in love with herself her enemy's son (playedby Vincent Lindon).

Valeria begins to gain the first covers: the news magazine "l'Espresso" (where her uncle Enzo Golino is vice-editor) put her on cover for the Venice Cinema Festival. Granata and Valeria go to Sardinia for a nude
pictorial and the photo with the red shirt is on the cover of October 1986 issue of "Photo Italia", and maybe of other editions of the photography monthly rewiew. In October 1987 the same photo is on the
cover of "Playmen" (you guessed it, it is like "Playboy"). The news magazine Epoca takes the same photo for cover but "corrects" the red shirt to cover the pubic hair.

In 1987 Montaldo makes "Gli occhiali d'oro" (in English "Gold Rimmed Glasses", in French "Les lunettes d'or") with Philippe Noiret (dr. Fatigati, an homosexual M.D. with gold rimmed glasses), Rupert Everett
(David, a Hebrew student) and Valeria (Hebrew Nora Treves, David's  girl-friend) The place is Ferrara in 1938, while the Fascist government makes laws against the Hebrews. The scenario is from the omonimous novel by Writer Giorgio Bassani, from the collection "Cinque storie ferraresi" but Valeria's role isn't from the original work.

She has a new boy-friend, an Puerto Rico-born actor and so follow him to Los Angeles, not taking care too much of her carrier. Actor Pee Wee Herman recruits her for his new film: he plays a farmer that joins a circus where there is an Italian acrobat, Gina Piccopupula (Valeria); in the cast there is Kris Kristoferson too. There is a more than 3 minute-lasting kiss betwen Pee Wee and Valeria, reduced in the final
cut. The movie is not a block-buster.

The producers of "Rain Man" are looking for a new face to join to Hoffman and Cruise (at the beginning Charlie's role was for Robert De Niro): she must be not too expensive and not too tall (Hoffman and Cruise are very expensive but not very tall). Valeria is chosen: her role was of a Mexican but Charlie's business is about cars and so it is easy to make some change: Charlie becomes an importer of Italian fashion cars and his girl-friend is an Italian, Susanna. In this way, Valeria has played two Italian roles but her Hollywood carrier has just begun.

In the universitary town of Pavia, Italy Director Margarethe Von Trotta makes an Italian-French-German co-production: "Paura e amore": Von Trotta and Writer Dacia Maraini have freely adapted a Russian Writer Cechov's novel, "Three Sisters" in an feminist scenario. Valeria is Sandra, the youngest of the Parini Sister (there is a wimpy brother too, played by Sergio Castellitto). Sandra is an enviroment-concerned medicine student. The other two sister are played by Fanny Ardant and by Greta Scacchi (do you remember her in "Coca Cola Kid" by Dusan Makavejev with Eric Roberts?).

Italian TV Comic Paolo Hendel appears in a near-as-himself role (Greta Scacchi's husband). Laura Obici, the fianceé of a friend of mine appears too in this movie, but as an extra! Giorgia Lepore dubbed Valeria's voice in Italian edition. And this is all for 1988.

In 1989 there are two European co-productions, two costume dramas. The first is "Acque di primavera" by Polish-born Director Jerzy Skolimowski from a novel of Russian Writer Ivan Turgeniev: other players are Timothy Hutton, Nastassia Kinski and William Forsythe. In the turn of few days the Russian Nobleman Dimitri Sanin falls in love with two women, the Italian Giulia Rosselli (Valeria) and the Russian Maria (Nastassia Kinski) and lost them two. The place is Mainz, Germany, in the last century.

Occurring the election of Italian Members of European Parliament Valeria supports the "Verdi Arcobaleno per l'Europa", a Green list that takes 2 seats and soon merges with the other Green party (3 seats).

The other costume drama is "La puttana del re" by Axel Corti: please note that Vittorio Amedeo II, Duke of Savoy and Pedmond was from December 24th, 1713 to Agust 2nd, 1718 King of Sicily and only in 1720
became King of Sardinia. It seems that Timothy Dalton has seriously considered to leave his wife and marry Valeria....

In 1990 there are two movies: the anthology "Tracce di vita amorosa" by Peter Del Monte (she plays a girl that meets the man has been implanted in the heart of her boy-friend) and the Sean Penn's debut as director "Indian Runner". Do you know that Sean Penn's idea to make this movie comes back when he listened to "Highway Patrolman" by Springsteen and was the boy-friend of Bruce's sisters? Well, for the first time ("Blind Date" in 1984) Valeria plays not an Italian role but a Mexican one....

In 1991 there are "Hot Shots!" and "The Year of the Gun": in the first movie she plays not an Italian role but as acrobat and horsewoman in the first scene she remember many Italians that Hollywood recruited for these roles.

In 1992 she makes her last Italian movie by an world-known director:
"Puerto Escondido" by Gabriele Salvatores, with Diego Abatantuono and Claudio Bisio. Abatantuono and Bisio play often in Salvatores's movies: maybe you have seen them in "Mediterraneo" (Best Foreign Film Academy Award) or in "Nirvana" (with Christopher Lambert, the first serious Italian sci-fi movie). Valeria plays Anita: Anita and her boy-friend (Bisio) are two Italians living in Mexico by expedients when comes
another Italian fugitive (Abatantuomo). In this movie there are a lot of cultivated drugs like marijuana and peyote: it seems that even the peyote Abatantuono eats once in the fiction was real peyote. In a scene
of a robbery Valeria wears a blonde wig. During the making of the movie in Mexico Fabrizio Bentivoglio came to meet Valeria (well, I don't know the exact day they had become a couple) and so played a cameo role: a young man screaming at the bus departure. It was the first time that Valeria and Bentivoglio worked in the same movie.

Well for to-day it's all about her carrier. Note that Valeria's Italian inflexion  made the filmakers choose Julia Roberts for "Pretty Woman" (at that time it was not a Disney tale, but a drama where Richard Geere
leaved the hooker back in the street) and "Flatliners" and not her.