Anna Maria Pierangeli Biography
Pier Angeli (1932 - 1971) was a television and film actress of Italian origin. Born Anna Maria Pierangeli in Cagliari, Sardinia, she made her film debut with Vittorio De Sica in Tomorrow is Too Late (1950) and was discovered by Hollywood, so much so that MGM cast her in her first American film, Teresa (1951). Reviews for this performance compared her to Greta Garbo, and she won the New Star Of The Year-Actress Golden Globe. Under contract to MGM throughout the 1950s, she appeared in a number of films, including The Light Touch with Stewart Granger. While filming The Story of Three Loves (1953), Angeli began a relationship with costar Kirk Douglas. She next appeared in Sombrero, in which she replaced an ailing Ava Gardner, then Flame and the Flesh (1954). The actress then moved to Warner Bros. for The Silver Chalice, which marked the debut of Paul Newman, and for Mam'zelle Nitouche. Returned to MGM for Somebody Up There Likes Me as Paul Newman's long-suffering wife. In the 1960s and until 1970 Angeli returned to live and work in Great Britain and Europe. His performance alongside Richard Attenborough in The Angry Silence (1960) earned him a nomination for a BAFTA as best foreign actress; and reunited with Stewart Granger for Sodom and Gomorrah (1963), in which she played Lot's wife. He had a brief role in the war epic Battle of the Bulge (1965). 1968 found Angels in Israel, starring in Every Bastard a King, about events during that nation's recent war. Angeli, as well as with Kirk Douglas, also had a brief romantic relationship with James Dean, before breaking it off. She had a son with her first husband, Vic Damone, and another son with her second husband, Armando Trovajoli whom she divorced in 1969.
