Asia Argento

Biography

Asia Argento (Italian: [ˈaːzja arˈdʒɛnto]; born Aria Maria Vittoria Rossa Argento; 20 September 1975) is an Italian actress and filmmaker. The daughter of filmmaker Dario Argento, she has had roles in several of her father's features and achieved mainstream success with appearances in XXX (2002), Land of the Dead (2005), and Marie Antoinette (2006). Her other notable acting credits include Queen Margot (1994), Let's Not Keep in Touch (1994), Traveling Companion (1996), Last Days (2005), and Islands (2011). Argento is the recipient of several accolades, including two David di Donatello awards for Best Actress and three Italian Golden Globes. Her directorial credits include The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (2004) and Misunderstood (2014). After the Weinstein scandal in 2017, Argento spoke publicly about her experiences and was widely discussed in connection with the "#MeToo" movement. The New York Times reported in August 2018 that actor Jimmy Bennett accused Argento of sexually assaulting him in 2013, when he was 17 and she was 37. According to reporting, Argento first met Bennett when he appeared as a child actor in her film The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things.

== Early life ==

Asia Argento was born Aria Maria Vittoria Rossa Argento in Rome on 20 September 1975. Her father is Dario Argento, an Italian filmmaker known for his work in the Italian giallo genre and for his influence on modern horror and slasher movies. Her mother was actress Daria Nicolodi and her maternal great-grandfather was composer Alfredo Casella. When Argento was born, the city registry office in Rome refused to acknowledge "Asia" as an appropriate name, and instead officially inscribed her name as "Aria" (a name accepted by the city registry). She went by the name Asia, which she later used professionally. She pronounces her name as "AH-see-ah", which friends sometimes abbreviate to sound like "Ozzie". Argento has said that as a child she was lonely and depressed, owing in part to her parents' work. Her father used to read her his horror scripts as bedtime stories. At age eight, Argento published a book of poems. At the age of 14, she ran away from home. 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, and has also mentioned that, because of this, 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. In an interview with Filmmaker magazine, she stated that, at one time, "I was sick for a while; I was agoraphobic. I was afraid to go out of my apartment for a long time, I could only go out to work."

== Career == Argento began to act at the age of nine, when she was cast in a small role in a film by Sergio Citti. When she was 16, she starred in her father's film Trauma (1993). She received the David di Donatello 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. Argento subsequently began to appear in English-language movies, such as B. Monkey and New Rose Hotel (both 1998). Argento also performed in French-language roles, beginning with Charlotte de Sauve in La Reine Margot (1994). Around the same time, she made her first foray into directing with the short films Prospettive and A ritroso (both 1994) and a documentary about her father (in 1996) and Abel Ferrara (in 1998). In 2000, Argento directed and wrote her first fiction feature film, Scarlet Diva (2000), which her father co-produced. In a review, Filmmaker magazine called the film "riotously funny" and dubbed Argento "a filmmaker with a great degree of promise".

She achieved wider recognition when she portrayed Russian undercover spy Yelena in the Hollywood action film XXX (2002), alongside Vin Diesel. The film grossed $277.4 million and launched Argento to international fame. She directed her second feature film, The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (2004), based on a book by JT LeRoy. In addition to her cinematic accomplishments, Argento has written a number of stories for magazines such as Dynamo and L'Espresso, while her first novel, titled I Love You Kirk, was published in Italy in 1999. She has modeled for the denim jeans brand Miss Sixty. She became a fan of the band Hondo Maclean when they wrote a track named after her and liked the track so much that she sent them pictures which they used as the cover of their 2003 album Plans for a Better Day. She appeared in Placebo's music video for "This Picture", and appeared on Placebo frontman Brian Molko's cover version of "Je t'aime... moi non plus". Argento has also starred in Catherine Breillat's period drama The Last Mistress. She dubbed the Italian version of the video game Mirror's Edge in the role of the runner Faith Connors, from 2008 to 2009. Argento has been part of the Legendary Tiger Man's project Femina, which was released on 14 September 2009. She is featured on the song "Life Ain't Enough for You", which was released as a single along with the B-side "My stomach is the most violent of all Italy", in which she also contributes vocals. In May 2013, Argento's debut album, entitled Total Entropy, was released by Nuun Music. In 2014, Argento played supporting role in the British film Shongram, a fictional romantic drama based around the factual and historical events of the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. Also in 2014, she directed her third feature film, titled Misunderstood (2014), was selected to compete in the Un Certain Regard section at that year's Cannes Film Festival. That year, while promoting the film, Argento stated that she was not going to act anymore and that she had decided to concentrate on writing and directing.

== Personal life ==

Besides Italian, Argento speaks English and French, which she learned for her role in Les Morsures de L'Aube. In 2009, Argento signed a petition in support of film director Roman Polanski, calling for his release after Polanski was arrested in Switzerland in relation to his 1977 charge for drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl. In 2017, she expressed regret for signing the petition, calling it "a mistake" and stating later on that Polanski's continued career "speaks terribly of the industry". Argento moved to Germany in 2017, citing experiences of victim blaming received in Italy following her allegations against Harvey Weinstein.