Valeria Golino

Valeria Golino is an Italian actress and film director. She is known to English-language audiences for her role in Rain Man, Big Top Pee-wee and the two Hot Shots! films, especially the olive-in-the-belly-button scene. The second child of an Italian germanist and a Greek painter, Valeria Golino grew up in Naples until her parents parted. After three years in Athens with her mother and another three in Naples with her father, she began to work as a model. She left high school after her first movie and didn't study performing arts at all. In 1985 she got the leading role in Little Flames (1985) by Peter Del Monte and the next year won the Best Actress Award at the Venice Film Festival for A Tale of Love (1986). After some European co-productions (Last Summer in Tangiers (1987), The Gold Rimmed Glasses (1987), Three Sisters (1988)) she began to work in Hollywood (Big Top Pee-wee (1988)). She soon gained prominent roles in Rain Man (1988), Hot Shots! (1991) and Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993). Now she works in the US (Clean Slate (1994), An Occasional Hell (1996)), Europe (The King's Whore (1990), Immortal Beloved (1994)) and in Italy. too, especially with young directors (Come due coccodrilli (1994), Le acrobate (1997), Shooting the Moon (1998)). In 1994 she produced and acted in Slaughter of the Cock (1996) by Greek director Andreas Pantzis. Her voice is more appreciated in Hollywood (where she took speech therapy) than in Italy (where she is sometimes dubbed); in "The Slaughter of the Cock" she acts as a deaf and dumb woman. She speaks four languages: Italian, Greek, French and English. Her brother is a musician and their uncle Enzo Golino is a famous journalist.