17 Facts About Luciana Paluzzi

Luciana Paluzzi was born on 10 June 1937 and is an Italian actress.

Luciana Paluzzi is perhaps best known for playing SPECTRE assassin Fiona Volpe in the fourth James Bond film, Thunderball, but she had important roles in notable films of the 1960s and 1970s in both the Italian film industry and Hollywood, including Chuka, The Green Slime, 99 Women, Black Gunn, The Klansman and The Sensuous Nurse.

Luciana Paluzzi went to Milan and studied naval engineering for two years at the Scientific Academy of Milan, being the only woman in her class.

One of her first roles was an uncredited walk-on part in Three Coins in the Fountain, which she got by chance through a friend of her father's who was invited for dinner and happened to be looking for a young actress doing a very short two-line role for director Jean Negulesco, thinking Paluzzi might be a fit.

Negulesco had not been satisfied with the other actresses so far, but when Luciana Paluzzi, who did not plan to become an actress, recited the English line the next day she got the role.

Luciana Paluzzi went on to appear in many movies, most of which were made in her native Italy.

Luciana Paluzzi was then cast in the British action drama Sea Fury as the Spanish-born Josita, who is fought over by Stanley Baker and Victor McLaglen's characters.

In 1959, Luciana Paluzzi went to Hollywood under contract with Twentieth Century Fox Television to star as a regular in the 20th Century Fox Television series Five Fingers, which was cancelled after three months.

Luciana Paluzzi then played Rafaella, the wife of Brett Halsey's character Ted Carter, in 1961's Return to Peyton Place.

In 1965, Luciana Paluzzi was cast as SPECTRE villainess, Fiona Volpe, "volpe" is "fox" in Italian, in Terence Young's Thunderball, for which she is best known.

Luciana Paluzzi had auditioned for the part of the lead Bond girl, Dominetta "Domino" Petacchi, but producers instead cast Claudine Auger, changing the character's name from an Italian to a Frenchwoman, renaming her Dominique Derval.

Luciana Paluzzi later claimed being a Bond girl was a double-edged sword.

Luciana Paluzzi appeared in such films as Muscle Beach Party and Chuka.

Luciana Paluzzi co-starred in the 1969 women in prison film 99 Women, and as a Southern belle in the 1974 Hollywood drama The Klansman, again for Terence Young.

Luciana Paluzzi appeared with Tab Hunter in an episode of The Tab Hunter Show in 1960.

In 1960, Luciana Paluzzi married actor Brett Halsey, who had just left his marriage with Renate Hoy, an actress and Miss Germany of 1954.

In 1979, Luciana Paluzzi married her current husband, American media mogul Michael Jay Solomon, who had founded Michael Jay Solomon Film International in 1977, co-founded Telepictures Corporation in 1978 and in 1985 became president of Warner Bros.