Biography

Diminutive Irish-Italian Lisa Gastoni began her acting career in Britain after her family settled there in 1948. Though she had initially wanted to be an architect, she changed her mind and became a model and then an actress, making her debut screen appearance in 1954. She appeared mostly in B-movies, at one time under contract to British Lion. Her first featured role of note was in the naval farce Le bébé et le cuirassé (1956), followed by a few leads in comedies like Trois hommes dans un bateau (1956) and Second Fiddle (1957), or crime thrillers like Face in the Night (1957), Man from Tangier (1957) and Rx for Murder (1958). She also guest starred in two episodes of ITV's Destination danger (1960). She was briefly married in the mid-50s to a physics professor.

In 1961, Gastoni returned to Italy, following a second marriage to a Greek actor. She was immediately elevated to higher profile roles, beginning with that of legendary pirate Mary Read in the swashbuckling adventure Mary la rousse, femme pirate (1961). She also paid her inevitable ornamental dues in a handful of sword-and-sandal spectacles. However, by the middle of the decade, Gastoni began to shed her 'good girl' image to parlay her prominence into a series of effective villainous portrayals: the nefarious Milady de Winter in Le Quatrième Mousquetaire (1964), Lucrezia Borgia in L'homme qui rit (1966) and the wife of gangster Luciano Luttring ("the machine gun soloist") in Carlo Lizzani's Lutring... réveille-toi et meurs (1966). This role won her a Best Actress Silver Ribbon, followed in 1968 with a Golden Plate at the David di Donatello Awards (the Italian equivalent of the Oscars) for her performance in the morbidly perverse drama Merci ma tante (1968).

In the 70s, Gastoni had yet more critical success playing seductive or sexually frustrated middle-class women in avant garde productions like Amore amaro (1974) (the story of two lovers separated by age, social background and irreconcilable political ideologies) and the morally ambiguous drama Scandalo (1976). She also played Benito Mussolini's mistress, Claretta Petacci, in Les derniers jours de Mussolini (1974). Less well received (despite a famous score by Ennio Morricone) was the excessively arty erotic fantasy Maddalena (1971), a curious and belated foray into psychedelics.

Gastoni absented herself from the screen between 1979 and 2005 to pursue other muses (painting and writing). A more recent performance in the drama Cuore sacro (2005) won her a Best Supporting Actress nomination at the David di Donatello Awards.

- IMDb mini biography by: I.S.Mowis