Moana Pozzi

Italian adult-film star Moana Pozzi was born on April 27, 1961, in Genova, Italy. In 1981 she began her film career, appearing in small uncredited parts in films and on television. Five years later she appeared in the Federico Fellini film Ginger and Fred (1986). It was on the set of this film that she met Ilona Staller, known better by her porn name of "Cicciolina". It was soon afterwards that Pozzi began appearing in hardcore sex films, under her real name. It wasn't long before she became a national sensation in Italy, eventually exceeding even Cicciolina's popularity. In her 1991 autobiography, "La Filosofia di Moana", she hints at affairs and sexual liaisons with a variety of prominent and important men in Italian society (including, rumor had it, former Prime Minister Bettino Craxi. That same year she and Staller started the Partito dellAmore (Party of Love), a short-lived political organization whose platform called for the legalization of brothels, improved sexual health and "love parks", but the party did poorly in the 1992 elections, and did no better in the next round of elections in 1993. Unfortunately, she contracted liver cancer and died of the disease in Lyon, France, in 1994, at age 33. It wasn't long, though, before dark rumors began circulating about her death; one was that she actually died of AIDS instead of liver cancer, another being that she had faked her death because she wanted to leave both porn and politics, and yet another claiming that prominent members of the new government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had been among those who had had affairs with Pozzi, and in order to avoid embarrassment they had her quietly "silenced". The fact that no one except her family had actually seen her body added fuel to the rumors. In 1999 the film Guardami (1999) was released, which was largely based on Pozzi's life. In September of 2005, Italian federal prosecutors announced that they would re-open the investigation of her death, due to the discovery of many errors and inconsistencies in the original official report. The next month a report on Italian television aired that gave the official register of deaths of the cemetery in Lyon where she was buried, revealing that she had indeed died of liver cancer and that her body had been cremated.