Italian actress Laura Antonelli has died at her home in the seaside town of Ladispoli, near Rome. She was 74. Her cleaning lady found her body on the floor and gave the alarm calling for help.
Born Laura Antonaz in 1941 in Pola (now Croatia), Laura Antonelli appeared in over 40 films in between the 1960s and early 1990s, winning popularity first in erotic movies and then in auteur pictures as Italian erotic icon of the 1970s.
She modeled in Italian Coke advertisements and made her film debut in 1965. The sexy comedic fantasy-drama Malicious (1973) by Salvatore Samperi was a box office hit and became soon a cult movie.
She starred in acclaimed flicks as Claude Chabrol's Docteur Popaul (1972), Dino Risi's How Funny Can Sex Be? (1973), Luigi Comencini's Till Marriage Do Us Part (1974), Giuseppe Patroni Griffi's The Divine Nymph (1975), Luchino Visconti's The Innocent (1976), Mauro Bolognini's Gran bollito (1977), and Ettore Scola's Passion on Love (1981).
Her career ended in 1991 when she was convicted on drugs charges before eventually clearing her name after a long legal battle. She rarely socialized after a plastic surgery operation went wrong at the start of this decade and she felt depressed.
Source: Play4movie
