Asia Aria Anna Maria Vittoria Rossa
Argento (born 20 September 1975) is an Italian
television and film actress and director.
Family and early life
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.
Career
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.
Personal life
Besides
Italian, she also speaks
fluent
English. She can also speak
French, which she learned for her
role in
Les Morsures de L’Aube.
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.
Filmography
References
- Horror-Movies.ca, Asia Argento, Horrific Filmography.
Retrieved on 16 February 2008.
- Steve Rose. "Wild Child". The Guardian. 8 July
2005.
- Caroline Ryder. "Asia Argento." Swindle Magazine. Retrieved
on 16 February 2008.
- Bruce Labruce. "Interview with Asia Argento". Index
Magazine. Published in 2001. Retrieved 16 February 2008.
- Daniel Robert Epstein. Interview with Asia Argento.
SuicideGirls.com. 7 Mar 2006.
- Joan Dupont. "Asia Argento at Cannes: A modern heroine bares all -
almost". International Herald Tribune. 21 May
2007.
- jt
leroy - writing
- Kristin Hohenade. "Therapy for Paralysis: Controversial Film". New
York Times. 28 January 2007.
- BLITZ: Legendary Tiger Man: Femina nas
Lojas em Setembro
- "Dangerous Beauty". Filmmaker
Magazine. Retrieved on 16 February 2008.
- Alan Jones. "Biography". OdetoAzia.com. September 2002.
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