Cicciolina
- This article is about a Italian porn star
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Ilona Staller (complete name Anna Ilona Staller or Italianized as Anna Elena Staller, 26 November 1951), also known by her stage name Cicciolina, is a Hungarian-born Italian porn-star and occasional singer, turned politician and the first hardcore performer in the world to be elected to a democratic parliament.
Biography
Anna Ilona, was born in Budapest, Hungary; her stepfather was an official in the Ministry of the Interior, her mother a midwife. In 1964, she began working for the Hungarian modeling agency, M.T.I. According to her memoirs, she lost her virginity at sixteen with a black university student. (Staller's memoirs were not known to have been translated into English as of early December of 2007.) In her memoirs and in a 1999 TV interview, she claimed that she had provided Hungarian authorities with information on American diplomats staying at a Budapest luxury hotel where she worked as a maid in the late-1960s.
Naturalized by marriage and settled in Italy, she met pornographer Riccardo Schicchi in early-1970s and beginning in 1973, achieved fame with a radio show called "Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?" (French for "Do You Want to Sleep with Me?") on Radio Luna. For that programme, she adopted the name "La Cicciolina," which translates from the Italian as "The Little Fleshy One." (She then moved to other variants, calling her fans "Cicciolini," her teddybear "Cicciolino," and the like.) Although she appeared in several films from 1970, she made her debut under her own name in 1975 with La liceale, whose U.S. title was The Teasers, playing Monica, a lesbian classmate of Gloria Guida. In 1978, on the RAI show "C'era due Volte" her breasts were the first to be seen bared on Italian TV.
Her memoirs were published as "Confessioni erotiche di Cicciolina" by the Olympia Press
of Milan in 1987. The same year, she appeared in Carne bollente, called The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empress in the US, co-starring John Holmes. The film would later become a topic of debate when it was revealed that, apparently, Holmes had tested positive for HIV. He eventually died of complications of the disease. 'Cicciolina' starred in her last porn film in 1992.
Staller married American sculptor Jeff Koons in 1991. Koons produced sculptures and paintings of the couple having sex, which were exhibited under the title "Made In Heaven." The marriage broke up in 1992, and their son Ludwig was born shortly afterward. Staller left the US with the child, and a lengthy custody battle ensued. Koons won custody in 1998 but Ludwig remains with Staller in Italy. In 2008 Staller filed suit against Koons for failing to pay child support.
In addition to posing for Jeff Koons, Staller has posed nude as a Playboy Magazine model in different countries' editions. Her first appearance in such a magazine was in Argentina in March of 1988; she posed again in this country in September of 1990. Other appearances for the magazine were in Hungary (June 1, 2005), Serbia (July 1, 2005) and in the September, 2005 issue of Mexican Playboy Magazine.
In 1994, she appeared in the cult film Replikator, and in 1996, she had a role in the acclaimed Brazilian telenovela Xica da Silva. In 2008 she was a contestant on the Argentinean version of "Dancing with the Stars", named "Bailando por un sueño". She retired after reportedly breaking a rib in rehearsals.
Political career
In 1979, Staller was presented as candidate to the Italian Parliament from the "Lista del Sole," Italy's first Green Party. In 1985, she switched to the Partito Radicale, campaigning against nuclear energy and NATO membership, for human rights and against world hunger. She was elected to the Italian parliament in 1987, with 20,000 votes, representing the Lazio district of Rome. In that election, she received the second highest number of votes among Radical Party candidates--only party leader Marco Pannella received more--but she was not reelected at the end of her term. In 1991, Staller was among the founders of the political movement Partito dell'Amore, spearheaded by her friend and partner Moana Pozzi.
She continues to be active in politics, advocating a safe future without nuclear energy and with absolute sexual freedom, including the right to sex in prisons. She is against all forms of violence, the death penalty, and the use of animals for fur or scientific experimentation. She is for the decriminalization of drugs, against censorship of any kind, in favor of sex education in schools, and for objective information about AIDS. She has proposed a tax on automobiles to reduce the damages of smog and fund the defense of nature.
In January 2002, she began exploring the possibility of campaigning in Hungary, where she was born, to represent Budapest's industrial K?bánya district in the Hungarian parliament. But she failed to collect enough petition signatures for a non-partisan candidacy. In the same year, she ran in local elections in Monza, Italy, promising to convert a prominent building into a gambling casino, but she attracted few votes. In 2004, she announced that she would run for mayor of Milan in 2006 with a similar promise.
Musical career
During her career, Staller has recorded several songs, mostly from her live performances. The songs almost always deal with sex, because her aim is to bring pornography into music as well. The result is generally more comic than erotic, with explicit lyrics being sung to a childish melody. Her most famous song is Muscolo Rosso, a song entirely dedicated to il cazzo, which means "the prick" in Italian. Because of its extensive use of swearwords, she could never release it in Italy, but it became a hit in other countries, especially in France, where the French did not grasp the meaning of the lyrics. The song gained considerable popularity in the Internet era, when many Italian speakers were able to hear it for the first time. She has released recordings in many countries, reflecting her world-wide popularity, and her records are top collectors's items. Collection of her vinyls is high, thanks to nude covers and the fact that she has become a gay icon.
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