Moana Pozzi

Moana Pozzi, whose complete name was Anna Moana Rosa Pozzi was born April 27, 1961 in Genoa, Italy and died September 15, 1994 in Lyon , France. She was with Cicciolina the most famous Italian erotic actress. She is sometimes credited in the earliest films as Linda Heveret. She was 1.78 m tall and her breast was a natural 5th size (no surgery). Her skin was as white as milk, she used to avoid tanning since teen age.

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Moana Pozzi: The Sins of Moana

Biography

The early years

Her parents chose her name watching a geographic map of Hawaii: it means "where the sea is deeper". Her father was a nuclear engineer and he used to move for work around the world with the family. As a teen, Moana lived with the family in Canada, then in Brazil. Maybe this brush with more open-minded societies, compared to Italy, changed her attitude about sex. Especially Brazil may have turned the Catholic raised Moana into something more connected with a sense of joy, liberty and fun. At 13 years old Moana moved back to Italy with the family, where she finished high school. When the family had to move again to Lyon, France, she decided to start living independently in Rome around 1980.

Independent life in Rome

In Rome, she started working as a model and she studied at an acting school. Sometimes she performed in TV commercials or as a walk-on in comedy movies. She was very ambitious and in Rome she became the lover of many famous people. Her most famous secret lover was Bettino Craxi, the Italian Prime Minister from 1983 to 1987. Through him, she got a job at Rai Television on a childrens' entertaiment program. The same year (1981) she performed her first hardcore movie Valentina, ragazza in calore (Valentina, girl in heat), but she was not credited. There was a scandal because at the same time the movie was in theatres, she was still working on children's TV. She denied being the same person, but she was anyway suspended from TV. This gave her a first popularity on newspapers and magazines. In 1985 Federico Fellini wanted her to perform in his movie Ginger and Fred. But Moana also realized that the way to success was too long for her ambition: by acting as walk-on it had took years and years to become popular and since she could not wait what she needed was a shortcut.

A key for a sudden popularity: Porn & intelligence

1986 was the year of changes: she met Riccardo Schicchi, the clever manager of Diva Futura, the agency of the most famous porn stars like Cicciolina. Her first A-movie in hard core is Fantastica Moana, where she used her real name for the first time. She also took part to the famous Curve Deliziose (Delitious curves) next to Cicciolina and 2 others, the first live show in Italy where naked models used to masturbate on the stage: a great scandal with problems with law (accused of outragious obsenity) but also a great triumph with theatres full every night. Her success was huge in the hardcore business and soon she eclipsed the popularity of Cicciolina in Italy (at the same time Cicciolina stopped doing porn for a political career in the Italian Parliament). Year by year, movie by movie Moana's popularity increased and it was a new thing that this popularity came out of the hardcore branch and it arrived to television and magazines as well. Every time she went on TV it used to be a public scandal. In Matrjoska by Antonio Ricci she used to come on stage completely naked or just wrapped in a transparent plastic veil. Magazines and newspapers were more and more interested in her and she used to be often on the covers. The oddness of her character was that she was not only beautiful and sexy, but she also spoke as an intelligent woman. In the interviews she could always come out as a real thinking woman, not just a brainless pinup. She beacome friend of intellectuals, writers and artists, such as Mario Schifano or Dario Bellezza. She gradually achieved the respect of families and children, never hiding her real work. This was the first time a porn-star could become so popular in every day life and she was the first showing that porn does not always involves shame and repent.

Construction of a definite successful character, the early '90s

Moana was conscious of her role in the show business, and through all the interviews she spoke of what she wanted to be for the public opinion: sexy, sophisticated, intelligent, open-minded, worldly. In 1991 she published her first book Moana's philosophy where she listed with marks from 4 to 9,5 twenty famous celebrities who had been lovers of hers. Among those: actors like Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Roberto Benigni and Massimo Troisi, soccer players like Paulo Roberto Falcao and Marco Tardelli, writers like Luciano De Crescenzo. The name of the most famous one, the actual prime minister Bettino Craxi, who was her lover in 1981, was hidden as "the politician".

In 1992 she co-founded, with Hungarian Cicciolina Ilona Staller , the Love Party of Italy, formed to legalize brothels, encourage better sex education and create "love parks". No one was elected but the image advertising was incredibly large. Her popularity had never been so high and the best Italian TV anchors wanted to interview her: Pippo Baudo, Maurizio Costanzo, Giuliano Ferrara, etc. The stylist Karl Lagerfield wanted her on the catwalk in 1993. Her sister Mima, became a porn actress as well with the stage name of Baby Pozzi.

Sudden illness and death

In summer 1994 she suddenly started feeling sick. She could not eat without vomiting and she lost weight week after week. She took a break time having a journey in India with her secret husband Antonio Ciesco. When she came back she was very ill still and she had to enter in a clinic in Lyon, France, just out of Italy's popularity, near to the family.

She suddenly died in September 15 1994 at the age of 33 of liver cancer (press supposes of AIDS, but that was just a fake rumour). The news of her death had been told on September 17 only. People missed her and could not believe the sudden disappearance of such a popular figure. Nobody but the family and some very close colleagues knew about her sickness, and on TV screens she was still healthy and smiling in programs recorded before the summer stop. No funeral ceremony took place, neither there was any grave to cry on. Rumours about her still living in the USA or in India started to circulate immediately. The silence of the family gave more impulse to that. The death in a foreign country also made harder to check the real documents of death. The idea of Moana still alive was much easier to accept by people. The fame of the myth of Moana still lives in Italy and, like Marilyn Monroe, the death just fixed her cult and her legend.

Moana's success

She had performed in about 100 porn movies, mostly in Italy, some in Los Angeles with Gerard Damiano as director. She sold someting like 1 million videotapes. She was on something like 50 covers of major magazines, not considering the amount of pictures on porn-magazines. Her business was calculated worth more than 50 billion of 1990 Italian liras, about 30 million of nowadays dollars. A part of her profits after her death was donated to a fondation for the medical reserarches against tumors. She was able to change the common sense of morality of bourgeois Italy into something more modern and open minded.

The Italian movie Guardami is based on her life.

Death controversy

Rumours of a controversy surrounding her death had been running up for years and years as some writers without and journalists occasionally published new fake revelations about her being alive and hiding from popularity somewhere in the world, maybe blackmailed or blackmailing one of her famous lovers. On the 10th anniversary of her death (2004) as soon as magazines and television began to remember her, new romours about her sudden disappearance came out. The court of justice of Rome opened a new file in order to find out whether she was alive or not. In December 2005 the Italian TV programme Chi l'ha visto? was able to show for the first time the official death certificate of a Lyon cemetery, recording the exact day of the actress' death. Interviews to the family finally confirmed the circumstances. Also her husband Antonio di Ciesco was interviewed for the first time after 1995. It was shown as well the no-named burial place in the "Pozzi" burial place in Lerma, near Alessandria in Piedmont, Italy. Hopefully with this revelation any rumour about her death is going to finish, but a new secret about her life came out.

A new secret

Her brother Simone, whom she always said to have a special feeling for, revealed in February 2006 at the same TV programme that he was actually the son of Moana, and not her brother. He had this revelation by the mother of Moana some time ago. He wrote a book about the truth which is going to be published soon. Press is now focusing on who could be Simone's father, probably Moana's last secret.

External links

• Moana Pozzi at IMDb
• Filmography Warning: contains explicit pornographic content
• The original death register shown in a TV programme in Italian