Francesca Romana Rivelli (born 9 March 1955), professionally known as Ornella Muti, is an Italian actress. Among the most known Italian actresses, in her career she has worked across various genres, working alongside Italian directors such as Damiano Damiani, Mario Monicelli, Dino Risi, Marco Ferreri, Carlo Verdone, Ettore Scola, Francesca Archibugi, Paolo Virzì, Umberto Lenzi, Francesco Nuti and many others. Outside of Italy, she is best known for her role as Princess Aura in the science fiction cult film Flash Gordon (1980).

Career

Muti was born in Rome to a Neapolitan journalist father and Ilse Renate Krause, a Russian Baltic German sculptor from Estonia. Her maternal grandparents emigrated from Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg, Russia) to Estonia. Muti modeled as a teenager and made her film debut in the 1970 film La moglie più bella (The Most Beautiful Wife) at the age of fourteen. In the early seventies, thanks to the great success of the film, she starred in numerous comedies, mainly ascribed to the erotic genre. In 1974, she played in the Mario Monicelli Come Home and Meet My Wife, which became a huge success and brought her wide popularity. During the 1970s and 1980s she worked with the most popular Italian actors as Ugo Tognazzi, Vittorio Gassman, Marcello Mastroianni, Carlo Verdone, Renato Pozzetto, Paolo Villaggio, Francesco Nuti, Giancarlo Giannini in successful comedies as Nobody's Perfect, Bonnie and Clyde Italian Style, Rich and Poor, All the Fault of Paradise, Me and My Sister, Tonight at Alice's, and also dramatic movies as The Last Woman, The Bishop's Bedroom, Nest of Vipers, Break Up, Tales of Ordinary Madness and The Future Is Woman. With Adriano Celentano she made two of the most successful comedies in the history of Italian cinema: The Taming of the Scoundrel and Madly in Love. In recent years she has alternated between working in independent and mainstream films, TV drama and TV hosting as at the Sanremo Music Festival in 2022. She is one of the few Italian actresses to achieve an international career across Europe where she has worked with Pedro Masó, Francisco Lara Polop, Mario Camus, Vicente Aranda, Lucas Belvaux, Georges Lautner, Volker Schlöndorff, Mike Hodges, Anthony Hickox, Mike Figgis, Peter Greenaway, and Grigory Chukhray. Her best known movies in Europe are Swann in Love in which she acted with Jeremy Irons and Alain Delon, The Bilingual Lover where she starred with Javier Bardem, Hotel, with Salma Hayek, David Schwimmer, Lucy Liu, Burt Reynolds, and John Malkovich, and The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story, a multimedia project by Peter Greenaway. In the United States she has worked with directors such as Woody Allen, John Landis, Eugene Levy, Buddy Giovinazzo and James Toback. She appeared also in Love and Money, Oscar, Once upon a Crime, Somewhere in the City and To Rome with Love and in the American TV movies Casanova, Wait Until Spring, Bandini, A Season of Giants and one episode of The Hitchhiker TV series. In 1981, she turned down the lead role (later given to Carole Bouquet) in For Your Eyes Only because her costume designer, Wayne Finkelman, was not hired by the production.

Personal life

In 1999, she insured her breasts for $350,000. In 2008, Muti introduced her own line of jewellery and subsequently opened several shops around the world. In 2015, the Italian court of Pordenone sentenced her to eight months in prison for having cancelled a theatrical performance following a health problem, which did not prevent her from participating in a social dinner with Vladimir Putin in Saint Petersburg in December 2010. She avoided prison by paying the sum of 30,000 euros to the Verdi theater as compensation. Muti has been married twice, first to Alessio Orano (a fellow actor in The Most Beautiful Wife), from 1975 to 1981. She was married, secondly, to Federico Fachinetti, from 1988 to 1996. Muti has three children: Naike Rivelli (born 1974), a fashion model, singer, and actress; a son, Andrea, and a second daughter, Carolina, both from her marriage to Fachinetti. In 1994, she became a resident of Monaco. On February 1, 2022, the actress announced that she would like to obtain Russian citizenship. She told TASS: "It would be nice for me to get citizenship, because it is part of my culture associated with my mother. She died this year, and it would be a gift for her." In July 2022, Muti was criticised by the far right for supporting the legalisation of cannabis in Italy.

Filmography

Films

Television