Erika Blanc

Erika Blanc — Biography

Born Enrica Bianchi Colombatto in Gargnano, in Italy's Brescia province, Erika Blanc became one of the most in-demand faces of Italian genre cinema from the mid-1960s. Her most cited role is the screen's first fictional Emmanuelle, in Io, Emmanuelle (1969).

She appeared in gothic horror such as La vendetta di Lady Morgan, The Third Eye and Kill, Baby, Kill; Italian westerns including Django Shoots First and Halleluja for Django; and spy and crime pictures such as the Kommissar X series and The Red Headed Corpse. So Sweet... So Perverse, The Devil's Nightmare and Mark of the Devil Part II made her a fixture of 1960s-70s European cult horror. In the 2000s she returned to the screen in small but intense parts for Turkish-born director Ferzan Özpetek, in Le Fate Ignoranti and Sacred Heart, played the grandmother in Adored (2003), and continued acting with Guests in a Villa (2020).