Cristina Gaioni

Actress and model Maria Cristina Gaioni was born in Milan, the daughter of painter Adriano Gaioni (1913-1965). She began in films as an extra after completing drama studies at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan under the auspices of theatrical impresario Giorgio Strehler. Her first film appearance was a bit part in the film La tempête (1958), which told the story of the Pugachev rebellion during the reign of Russia's Catherine the Great. She then featured in leading roles in the prison drama L'Enfer dans la ville (1959) (winning a Silver Ribbon Award as Best Supporting Actress), the bittersweet comedy Arrangiatevi (1959) and Pietro Germi's mystery thriller Meurtre à l'italienne (1959). With a trio of back-to-back hits to her name early in her career, the media was quick to tout her as "the Italian Brigitte Bardot", also because of her strong resemblance to the famous French star. Gaioni had another strong role in Elio Petri's directorial feature film debut, the crime thriller L'assassino (with Marcello Mastroianni in the title role), but was thereafter mostly relegated to routine programmers, genre and exploitation films. Towards the end of the swinging 60s, Gaioni became involved with Rome's in-crowd, befriended the singer Patty Pravo and married the keyboardist of her backing band ('The Pipers') Alberto Visentin.