Italians Who Stole Hollywood Hearts

Audrey Hepburn and Andrea Dotti

Although the star of Breakfast at Tiffany's and Roman Holiday was not American but half English and half Dutch, she was universally considered an icon made in the USA. Her charm and timeless beauty are still a benchmark for the divas of the big screen. Her sentimental life, unlike her professional one, was filled with turbulent and at times unhappy relationships from which two sons were born, Sean Ferrer and Luca. The latter is the son of Roman psychoanalyst Andrea Dotti. Although the enchanting star’s 13-year marriage to Dotti was shipwrecked, Hepburn never disavowed her love for Italy to the end of her days.

Clooney and Canalis’ love story lasted less than 24 months as they made the swing between Los Angeles and George's villa on Como Lake in Laglio. But, the romance made all the girls next door in the world dream about it! Clooney is perhaps the world’s most beloved and iconic actor, endowed with charisma and political ambitions. Canalis is a very flashy actress and model. We all rooted for a happy ending, but irreconcilable  differences separated them in 2011.

Zoe Saldana and Marco Perego

The protagonist of Avatar and Guardians of the Galaxy has been happily married since 2013 to Marco Perego, an artist from Salò, a town in northern Italy on Garda Lake. The golden couple has three children: eight-year-old twin sons Cy Aridio and Bowie Ezio and six-year-old son Zen. A curious fact: each parent adopted the surname of the other to become Zoe Saldana Perego and Marco Perego Saldana. Zoe attended the 2023 Oscars to support the four nominations for James Cameron's $2.2-billion-grossing Avatar sequel, in which she reprised the role as Na'vi warrior Neytiri. 

The ethereal redhead Jessica Chastain has found love in Italy. She is the wife of the Italian nobleman Gian Luca Passi di Preposulo whom she married in 2017 in Villa Tiepolo Passi in Carbonera, near Venice. Before her breakout in the early 2010s, Jessica—a graduate of the famed Juilliard School in New York City—had to contend with minor roles such as appearing in “Law & Order.” She became internationally known when she starred in Catherine Bigelow’s movie Zero Dark Thirty. Jessica and Gian Luca crossed paths in 2012 and started dating. He proposed in 2017, and a few months later the couple got married at Gian Luca’s historical family House.  

Willem Dafoe and Giada Colagrande

Married since 2005, Willem Dafoe and Giada Colagrande met on the set of The Aquatic Adventures of Steve Zissou, a film directed by Wes Anderson. Colagrande is a film director and actress from Pescara in the Abruzzo region, and she is twenty years younger than her husband. She and the American actor, a four-time Oscar nominee, do not have children. They both now have dual citizenship in Italy and the United States. 

Actor and musician Dermot Mulroney was born in Virginia in 1963 and graduated from Northwestern University. From 1987 to 2004 he was married to famous actress Catherine Keener. Right after the divorce, he married Italian producer Tharita Catullé, daughter of Italian singer Emy Cesaroni, with whom he had two daughters, Mabel Ray (2008) and Sally June (2009). His brother Kieran is also an actor and the two of them sing together in a country duo. This year Dermot stars in the new slasher sequel Scream 6. One funny anecdote is that he is often confused with actor Dylan McDermott, which inspired “Saturday Night Live” to air a game show sketch in 2012 called “Dylan McDermott or Dermot Mulroney?”

Ava Gardner and Walter Chiari

At the end of the 1960s, Italy’s paparazzi contributed to the myth of La Dolce Vita. The most beautiful Italian actors paired with movie stars and were captured in pics on the world’s movie stages as well as in Via Veneto in Rome, a few miles away from Cinecittà Studios. The American diva Ava Gardner, at the time considered perhaps the most beautiful woman in the world, and the Italian TV star Walter Chiari lived four years of passion. The two appeared in gossip chronicles everywhere and, thanks to that publicity, Walter also managed to get an engagement on Broadway. In 1961 he starred in over a hundred performances of the musical comedy The Gay Life written by Arthur Schnitzler.