Ida Galli

Ida Galli — Biography

Born in 1939 in Sestola, in Italy's Emilia-Romagna region, Ida Galli moved to Rome to find acting work after finishing school; her birth date has been variously given as 8 October 1939 and 9 April 1942. She made her screen debut in 1959 under the pseudonym Arianna in Piero Tellini's Nel Blu Dipinto di Blu, a role that caught Federico Fellini's eye and led to a small part in his 1960 film La Dolce Vita, then to Carolina in Luchino Visconti's The Leopard (1963).

Galli went on to appear in more than forty-five films, most often credited not under her own name but as Evelyn Stewart; in Mario Bava's La Frusta e il Corpo she was billed as Isli Oberon instead. From 1965 she became a fixture of the spaghetti Western with films such as Blood for a Silver Dollar, Adiós Gringo and Perché Uccidi Ancora, then of the giallo wave with Il Coltello di Ghiaccio and The Psychic, among others. Enrico Lancia, author of the Dizionario del Cinema Italiano, rates her strongest in dramatic roles, though he credits her greatest success to adopting the Evelyn Stewart name and focusing on genre films.

She closed out her career with 1990's Con i Piedi per Aria, having also appeared alongside her son, Alessandro Cocco, in one of Umberto Lenzi's films.