1. Pia Zadora was born on Pia Alfreda Schipani; May 4,1954 and is an American actress and singer.
25 Facts About Pia Zadora
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Pia Zadora debuted as a child actress on Broadway, in regional theater, and in the film Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.
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Pia Zadora came to national attention in 1981 when, following her starring role in the highly criticized Butterfly, she won a Golden Globe Award as New Star of the Year while simultaneously winning the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress and the Worst New Star for the same performance.
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Pia Zadora's father, Alphonse Schipani, was an Italian-American violinist, and her mother, Saturnina Schipani, was a Polish-American theatrical wardrobe supervisor for Broadway productions, the Metropolitan Opera and the New York City Opera.
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Pia Zadora adapted part of her mother's maiden name as her stage name.
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Pia Zadora appeared as a child actress with Tallulah Bankhead in Midgie Purvis, and played the youngest sister in the Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof.
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Pia Zadora's acting career made little progress until, while touring with a musical production in 1972, she met Meshulam Riklis, 30 years her senior.
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Not long after her marriage, Pia Zadora had a breakthrough as the Dubonnet Girl, appearing in print and television commercials for the aperitif wine, in whose American distributor Riklis was a shareholder.
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Pia Zadora starred with Stacy Keach and Orson Welles in the 1982 film of James M Cain's novel Butterfly, whose plot involved father-daughter incest.
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The score features Pia Zadora singing "It's Wrong for Me to Love You".
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Pia Zadora won that year's Golden Globe Award as Best New Star of the Year amid charges that Riklis had purchased the award with a promotional campaign that included Zadora's image on Sunset Boulevard billboards, an appearance in Playboy magazine, and entertaining Golden Globe voters.
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Pia Zadora next starred in the 1982 film Fake-Out, called Nevada Heat, a women in prison B-movie comedy co-starring Telly Savalas and Desi Arnaz Jr.
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In 1985, Pia Zadora starred as the object of an extraterrestrial's affections in the musical comedy Voyage of the Rock Aliens.
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In 2000, Pia Zadora was nominated at the 20th Golden Raspberry Awards as Worst Actress of the Century, ultimately losing to Madonna.
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Pia Zadora's cover of the Shirley Ellis hit "The Clapping Song", recorded for the film score of The Lonely Lady in 1983, reached the US top 40, and in 1984 she had a hit duet with Jermaine Jackson titled "When the Rain Begins to Fall" from the movie Voyage of the Rock Aliens.
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In 1988, Pia Zadora worked with producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis on an album titled When the Lights Go Out.
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Pia Zadora appeared at San Francisco's Rrazz Room's 3rd annual Rrazziversary Gala Celebration and Benefit for St Jude Children's Research Hospital on March 17,2011, and at the Nevada Children's Center's Great Gatsby Gala on April 3,2011.
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In 2012, Pia Zadora performed with the Desert Symphony Orchestra at the McCallum Theatre in Palm Desert, California, and appeared on the TV show Celebrity Ghost Stories.
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Pia Zadora married businessman Meshulam Riklis in 1977, when she was 23 and he was 54.
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Pia Zadora was a marquee headliner at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas during the early 1970s owing to her association with Riklis and Sinatra.
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Pia Zadora later claimed on a September 2012 episode of BIO's Celebrity Ghost Stories that Pickfair was razed owing to a troubling apparition that appeared to her and children when her husband was away on business.
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Riklis commissioned a nude oil portrait of Pia Zadora, which greeted visitors.
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Pia Zadora has been married to Michael Jeffries, a detective with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, since 2005 and currently resides in Summerlin, Nevada.
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In June 2013, following an altercation with her teenage son, Pia Zadora was charged with domestic violence, battery and coercion, and jailed after a SWAT team surrounded her home.
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In September 2014, Pia Zadora was hospitalized in the intensive care unit of University Medical Center of Southern Nevada due to head and leg injuries sustained in a golf cart accident.