Valeria Golino - 1965

                 
Wholesomely sexy Italian actress Valeria Golino was a teen model when she appeared in her first film, Lina Wertmuller's Joke of Destiny (1984). Valeria Golino (born 22 October 1965) is an Italian actress and director.Conversant (if not proficient) in several languages, Golino thrived in international films bearing such provocative titles as Little Fires (1985), Last Summer in Tangiers (1987) and Love Story (1987). One of her first important American roles was as Tom Cruise's voice-of-conscience girlfriend in the Oscar-winning Rain Man (1988), after which she portrayed the trapeze artist who falls in love with Pee-Wee Herman in Big Top Pee-Wee (1988). Blessed with a subtle, sparkle-eyed sense of humor, Golino has been seen to good advantage in the adventure-film spoofs Hot Shots! (1991) and Hot Shots Part Deux (1992); her deadly serious delivery of the most ridiculous of lines ("What do you do with an elephant with three balls?") has been attributed by some to expert comic timing, and by others to Golino's alleged habit of learning her English dialogue by rote.Golino was born in Naples, Italy, to an Italian father who was a Germanist and scholar and a Greek mother, Lalla, who was a painter; one of her grandmothers was Egyptian-French.

She grew up in an "artistic household" and, after her parents split, was raised between Athens and Sorrento (Naples). Golino is the niece of L'Espresso journalist Enzo Golino; her brother is a musician. As a child her mother would frequently take her to the cinema and it is thanks to her that she quickly became interested in films. But in spite of this, she never thought about pursuing a film career until she made her first movie: in fact she wanted to be a cardiologist. She was diagnosed with scoliosis at 11 and had to have a steel rod implanted in her back for five years. At 14 she started to work as a model in Athens, Milan (for Vogue magazine), London and Los Angeles: she shot commercials for beers, perfumes and makeups and modeled bathing suits and jeans. An absent-minded student, she dropped out of high school after her first film.