Quick Facts
Biography
Lisa Gastoni (born 28 July 1935) is an Italian film actress.
Biography
Daughter of an Italian father and an Irish mother, Gastoni moved to England after World War II where she began her film and modeling career. She appeared in various B movies throughout the 1950s, as well as co-starring as Giulia in the Sapphire Films TV series The Four Just Men (1959) for ITV.
Gastoni returned to Italy in the 1960s, first appearing in sword-and-sandal and swashbuckler films, but eventually gaining the attention of respected directors. The turning point in her film career was her role in Grazie, zia by Salvatore Samperi. This would set the tone for the roles she would play for the next decade; bourgeois women who were seductive yet sexually frustrated, cruel and arrogant yet sad and sympathetic, manipulating the people around them to try and fill the emptiness in their own lives.
After 1978, she retired from acting to focus on painting and writing. In 2005 she returned to the screen with an appearance in the film Cuore Sacro.
Selected filmography
- They Who Dare (1954)
- Doctor in the House (1954)
- Josephine and Men (1955)
- Man of the Moment (1955)
- The Baby and the Battleship (1956)
- Three Men in a Boat (1956)
- Second Fiddle (1957)
- Blue Murder at St Trinian's (1957)
- Man from Tangier (1957)
- Face in the Night (1957)
- Intent to Kill (1958)
- Passport to China (1961)
- Queen of the Seas (1961)
- The Breaking Point (1961)
- Eva (1962)
- Tharus Son of Attila (1962)
- Gidget Goes to Rome (1963)
- The Four Musketeers' (1963)
- 3 Avengers (1964)
- Three Swords for Rome (1964)
- Gentlemen of the Night (1964)
- Messalina vs. the Son of Hercules (1964)
- Wild, Wild Planet (1965)
- War of the Planets (1966)
- Wake Up and Die (1966)
- Come Play with Me (1968)
- Seduction (1973)
- Bitter Love (1974)
- Last Days of Mussolini (1975)
- Submission (1976)
- Cuore Sacro (2005)