Pamela Villoresi

Pamela Villoresi — Biography

With more than a hundred theatre productions and over thirty films to her name, Pamela Villoresi works as an Italian actress of theatre, cinema and television. Cinema audiences know her best as Viola in Paolo Sorrentino's The Great Beauty (La Grande Bellezza, 2013). Her stage work earned her the Eleonora Duse Award.

The daughter of a Prato cloth merchant and a German mother, she began her artistic path with acting lessons at the Teatro Metastasio in Prato. In 1975 Giorgio Strehler called her into the company he had founded, the Piccolo Teatro di Milano; around the same time the television drama Marco Visconti brought her wide attention and she entered a continuous film career, often in leading roles. Her early films include Tell Me You Do Everything for Me (1976, as Mary Mancini), A Dangerous Toy (1979, as Patrizia Griffo) and Target (1979). In 1978 she won a Grolla d'oro for her role in Marco Bellocchio's Il gabbiano.

From 1990 she occasionally worked as a stage director and television presenter. Her filmography also includes Splendor (1989, as Eugenia), Evelina e i suoi figli (1990, as Nanà), Amici miei – Come tutto ebbe inizio (2011) and I Killed Napoléon (2015, as Cecilia).