Asia Argento

Aria Asia Maria Vittoria Rossa Argento (born 20 September 1975) is an Italian actress, singer, model, and director. --- Her mother is actress Daria Nicolodi and her father is Dario Argento, an Italian film director, producer and screenwriter, well known for his work in the Italiangiallo genre and for his influence on modern horror and slasher movies. Her maternal great-grandfather was composer Alfredo Casella. When Asia Argento was born in Rome, the city registry office refused to acknowledge Asia as an appropriate name, and instead officially inscribed her as Aria Argento. She nonetheless uses the name Asia Argento professionally. Argento has said that as a child she was lonely and depressed due, in part, to her parents' work. Her father used to read her his scripts as bedtime stories. At age eight, Argento published a book of poems. At the age of 14, she ran away from home. She was an introvert and read to make up for having no friends. In an interview with Filmmaker magazine she stated that she was agoraphobic while she was writing Scarlet Diva and that she could not leave her apartment for months. She said: "I was afraid to go out of my apartment for a long time, I could only go out to work." Argento has mentioned in interviews that she does not have a close relationship with her father. She has mentioned that he was absent when she was a child. She has also mentioned that she did not have a happy childhood. Regarding her relationship with her father and her reason for acting, she has stated that: "I never acted out of ambition; I acted to gain my father’s attention. It took a long time for him to notice me – I started when I was nine, and he only cast me when I was 16. And he only became my father when he was my director. I always thought it was sick to choose looking at yourself on a big screen as your job. There has to be something crooked in your mind to want to be loved by everybody. It’s like being a prostitute, to share that intimacy with all those people." Asia Argento started acting at the age of nine, playing a small part in a film by Sergio Citti. She also had a small part in Demons 2, a 1986 film written and produced by her father, at the age of 10. She received the David di Donatello (Italy's version of the Academy Award) for Best Actress in 1994 for her performance in Perdiamoci di vista!, and again in 1996 for Compagna di viaggio, which also earned her a Grolla d'oro award. In 1998, Argento began appearing in English-language movies, such as B. Monkey and New Rose Hotel. Argento directed and wrote her first movie, Scarlet Diva (2000), which her father co-produced.