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Asia Argento - Biography |
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Asia Aria Anna Maria Vittoria Rossa
Argento (born 20 September 1975) is an Italian actress and director.
Her mother is actress Daria Nicolodi and her father is Dario Argento, an
Italian film director, producer and screenwriter, well known for his work
in the Italian giallo genre and for his influence on modern horror and
slasher movies. Her great-grandfather was composer Alfredo Casella.
When Asia Argento was born in Rome, the city registry office refused to
acknowledge Asia as an appropriate name, and instead officially inscribed
her as Aria Argento. She nonetheless uses the name Asia Argento
professionally. Argento has said that as a child she was lonely and
depressed due, in part, to her parents' work. Her father used to read her
his scripts as bedtime stories. At age eight, Argento published a book of
poems. At the age of fourteen, she ran away from home. She was an
introvert and read to make up for having no friends.
In an interview with Filmmaker Magazine she stated that she was
agoraphobic while she was writing Scarlet Diva and that she could not
leave her apartment for months. She said: "I was afraid to go out of my
apartment for a long time, I could only go out to work."
Argento has mentioned in interviews that she does not have a close
relationship with her father. She has mentioned that he was absent when
she was a child. She has also mentioned that she did not have a happy
childhood. Regarding her relationship with her father and her reason for
acting, she has stated that:
I never acted out of ambition; I acted to gain my father’s attention. It
took a long time for him to notice me – I started when I was nine, and he
only cast me when I was 16. And he only became my father when he was my
director. I always thought it was sick to choose looking at yourself on a
big screen as your job. There has to be something crooked in your mind to
want to be loved by everybody. It’s like being a prostitute, to share that
intimacy with all those people.
Asia Argento started acting at the age of nine playing a small part in a
film by Sergio Citti. She also had a small part in a film written and
produced by Dario Argento in, The Church (1989), when she was 14, and
Trauma (1993), when she was 18. She also had her first nude scene during
Trauma. She received the David di Donatello (Italy's version of
Hollywood's Academy Award) for Best Actress in 1994 for her performance in
Perdiamoci di vista!, and again in 1996 for Compagna di viaggio, which
also earned her a Grolla d'oro award. In 1998, Argento began appearing in
English-language movies, such as B. Monkey and New Rose Hotel, with
Christopher Walken.
Argento has proven her ability to work in multiple languages, adding
French to the list of languages in which she has performed, with a role in
1994's La Reine Margot. That same year, she made her first foray into
directing, calling the shots behind the short films Prospettive and A
ritroso. In 1996, she directed a documentary on her father, and in 1998 a
second one on Abel Ferrara, which won her the Rome Film Festival Award.
She directed and wrote her first movie called Scarlet Diva (2000), which
was co-produced by Dario Argento. Four years later she directed her second
movie, The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (2004), based on a book by
JT LeRoy, the pen name of Laura Albert, this time in the United States.
According to a Paris Review interview with Laura Albert, Argento and
Savannah Knoop, who played the role of JT's public persona, became lovers.
In addition to her cinematic accomplishments, Argento has written a number
of stories for magazines such as Dynamo and L'Espresso, while her first
novel, titled I Love You Kirk, was published in Italy in 1999. She has
modeled for and endorses the brand "Miss Sixty". The band Hondo Maclean
from South Wales, gained Argento's interest when they wrote a track named
after her. She liked the track so much she sent them pictures which they
used as the cover of their 2003 EP Plans for a better day.
From 17 to 25 October 2006, Argento contributed a video diary to Nick
Knight's website, SHOWstudio. The title of the 54 entries/episodes was
"Don't Bother To Knock" and detailed Argento's daily life with three
entries (noon, 6 pm and midnight) posted every day. The content of the
entries were partially controlled by a discussion forum and together
formed a cohesive whole, a sort of "mini-movie" anyone could view for
free. In the clips Argento discusses topics such as freaks, her father,
Fellini and her sexuality; she also journals a pregnancy, a new love
interest and her unraveling psyche. All of these issues come to a head
before Argento's final revelations and good-byes. The last visual of the
diary is a digitally manipulated portrait of Argento taken by Knight,
slowly burning away.
She appeared in Placebo's music video, This Picture, and featured on a
cover version of Je t'aime... moi non plus with Placebo frontman Brian
Molko and dance producers Trash Palace. Argento has also starred in
Catherine Breillat's period drama, Une vieille maîtresse (The Last
Mistress).
She dubbed the Italian version of the video game Mirror's Edge in the role
of the runner Faith Connors.
Argento has been part of the Legendary Tiger Man's project Femina, and the
album was released 14 September 2009. She is featured on the song Life
Ain't Enough for You, which was released as a single along with the B-side
Il Mio Stomacco É Il Piu Violento de Tutta Italia, in which she also
contributes with her voice.
Besides Italian, she also speaks fluent Russian and English. She can also
speak French, which she learned for her role in Les Morsures de L’Aube.
Argento has been romantically linked with Vincent Gallo, Sergio Rubini,
Michael Pitt, and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers.
Her first child, Anna Lou, was born on 20 June 2001. Italian rock and roll
musician Marco Castoldi (lead singer of Bluvertigo), also known as Morgan,
is the father. She named her daughter after her half-sister Anna Ceroli,
who died in a motorcycle accident. She and her daughter live in Rome.
Asia married film director Michele Civetta on 27 August 2008 in Arezzo.
Her second child, Nicola Giovanni, was born on 15 September 2008 in Rome. |
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Asia Argento - Personal Quotes |
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During the shooting of my
directorial debut, I must never let myself go to any goliardery,
even if I might think I am missing some fun, never mingle with the
rest of the crew, because they are actors while I am the mirth of a
rickety poem. They are solo artists, virtuosos - but I am the
orchestra, the strings carpet where everybody has to lay. They are
the public, while I am tonight's special event. I allow them to be
instantly well-liked, but I must remain rigorous to reveal my eyes,
I have to act out the things that never happen. When I think of my
film, I don't take anything from the reality that I know, I suck
only from the utopia/reality I would want to live. When I say my
lines, the I have written for myself, I think about this, of a
womb-like world where amniotic liquids protect me from injustices
and the boogey man.
[In answer to the question "How do you want to be remembered?"] "As
somebody who has done everything, but didn't know how to do
anything."
"I want to be adopted by the french. I want to go to live in Paris.
I want to live in a country where a guy like "Gaspar Noé" can direct
his films without going to jail. I don't want to live in Italy, the
country of the apes, and end up being an actress with an onion
placed where I once had a heart, that instead of beating, it
stinks."
"I care only about that. Almost only about cinema"
"Sometimes I think my father gave me life because he needed a lead
actress for his films."
"I have nothing in my life besides my work. I am obsessed with it. I
leave my house only when I'm forced to. All my life, I have felt
that what I did was wrong. But now when I work I feel good about
it."
"The questions about my father get less and less, and I'm relieved
about that. No, I wasn't upset by the things he did to me in his
films. I never thought of it like it was me doing it, because he
would say, 'It's only a movie,' and I thought the same."
"In a way, when you talk so much about something, it does not belong
to you any more. It's happened to me and my bad memories. I've
manipulated them and now they could be parts of Gone With the Wind."
"I tend to be a lazy actress, unless I'm pushed. Most of the time
nothing much is required of directors, which is a pity. I've worked
with very few directors who've asked of me what I asked of myself."
"After xXx (2002) came out, because of all the publicity, I was
wearing Prada and going to the gym, and I had an agent in LA and all
this shit that I've avoided for years. I felt that was expected of
me, that I had to be a sexy bombshell. I started receiving all these
offers for these kick-ass chick sort of roles. But it didn't make me
very happy, to tell the truth, and after giving birth, it all felt
different. I don't mean to sound like a bourgeois moralist, but it's
true - I started thinking, 'What is Anna [her daughter] going to
think?'".
"I always saw myself as really ugly. My father even told me I was
ugly because I would shave my head and look like a boy. Then, when I
was 21, I was offered this part in a movie where I was supposed to
be really sexy [Michael Radford's B. Monkey (1998)]. It was strange
for me to have to research femininity, but I found out these tricks
for getting attention that I didn't know before. It was a kind of
revenge, I guess, on all the kids who said I was ugly at school". |
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Asia Argento - Filmography |
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Diamant 13 (2009) ....
Calhoune
... aka Diamond 13 (International: English title)
De la guerre (2008) .... Uma
... aka On War (International: English title)
La terza madre (2007) .... Sarah Mandy
... aka Mother of Tears (USA)
... aka Mother of Tears: The Third Mother (International: English
title)
... aka The Third Mother (Italy: literal English title)
Une vieille maîtresse (2007) .... Vellini
... aka The Last Mistress (Canada: English title) (USA: new title)
... aka An Old Mistress (Australia: new title)
Go Go Tales (2007) .... Monroe
Boarding Gate (2007) .... Sandra
Transylvania (2006) .... Zingarina
Marie Antoinette (2006) .... Comtesse du Barry
... aka Marie Antoinette (France)
Live Freaky Die Freaky (2006) (voice) .... Habagail Folger
Land of the Dead (2005) .... Slack
... aka George A. Romero's Land of the Dead (USA: complete title)
... aka La terre des morts (Canada: French title)
... aka Land of the Dead - Le territoire des morts (France)
Cindy: The Doll Is Mine (2005) .... Cindy Sherman/The model
Last Days (2005) .... Asia
Milady (2004) (TV) .... Sally La Chèvre
The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (2004) .... Sarah
... aka Le livre de Jérémie (France)
The Keeper (2004) .... Gina
Ginostra (2002) .... The nun
xXx (2002) .... Yelena
... aka Triple X (USA: informal English title)
La sirène rouge (2002) .... Anita
... aka The Red Siren (USA: DVD title)
Les morsures de l'aube (2001) .... Violaine Charlier
... aka Love Bites (International: English title)
L'assenzio (2001)
Loredasia (2000)
"Les misérables" (2000) TV mini-series .... Éponine Thénardier
... aka I miserabili (Italy)
... aka Les Misérables - Gefangene des Schicksals (Germany)
... aka Los miserables (Spain)
Scarlet Diva (2000) .... Anna Battista
La tua lingua sul mio cuore (1999)
Il fantasma dell'opera (1998) .... Christine Daaé
... aka Dario Argento's The Phantom of the Opera (UK: video title)
... aka Phantom of the Opera (USA: video box title)
... aka The Phantom of the Opera (USA)
B. Monkey (1998) .... Beatrice
New Rose Hotel (1998) .... Sandii
Viola bacia tutti (1998) .... Viola
... aka Viola Kisses Everybody (USA)
La sindrome di Stendhal (1996) .... Det. Anna Manni
... aka Stendhal's Syndrome
... aka The Stendhal Syndrome
Compagna di viaggio (1996) .... Cora
... aka Traveling Companion (USA)
Il cielo è sempre più blu (1995) .... Cousin
... aka Bits and Pieces
La reine Margot (1994) .... Charlotte of Sauve
... aka Die Bartholomäusnacht (Germany)
... aka La regina Margot (Italy)
... aka Queen Margot (USA)
Perdiamoci di vista! (1994) .... Arianna
... aka Let's Not Keep in Touch
DeGenerazione (1994) .... Lorna
Trauma (1993) .... Aura Petrescu
... aka Dario Argento's Trauma (USA: complete title)
Condannato a nozze (1993) .... Olivia
... aka Condemned to Wed
Le amiche del cuore (1992) .... Simona
... aka Close Friends
Palombella rossa (1989) .... Valentina
... aka Palombella rossa (France)
... aka Red Lob (International: English title)
La chiesa (1989) .... Lotte
... aka Cathedral of Demons
... aka Demon Cathedral
... aka Demons 3
... aka In the Land of the Demons
... aka The Church
Zoo (1989) .... Martina
"Turno di notte" (1 episode, 1987)
- Giallo Natale (1987) TV episode
Dèmoni 2: L'incubo ritorna (1986) .... Ingrid Haller
... aka Demoni 2 (Italy: short title)
... aka Demons 2 (USA)
... aka Demons 2: The Nightmare Is Back (USA)
... aka Demons 2: The Nightmare Returns (USA: video title)
"Sogni e bisogni" (1985) TV mini-series .... Giada |
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Asia Argento - Related Links |
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Wikipedia: Asia Argento
YouTube: Asia Argento
Asia Argento
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