Moana Pozzi

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Moana Pozzi
Birthdate: April 27, 1961
Birth location: Genoa, Liguria
Birth name: Anna Moana Rosa Pozzi
Date of death: September 15, 1994
Height: 1.78 m

Moana Pozzi, often called simply Moana, complete name was Anna Moana Rosa Pozzi (April 27, 1961 - September 15, 1994) was an Italian pornographic acress. She was sometimes credited in the early films as Linda Heveret. She was 1.78 m tall and her breasts were a natural size 5 (no surgery).

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early years

Moana Pozzi was born in Genoa, Liguria.

Moana Pozzi portrayed on the cover of The Sins of Moana.
Moana Pozzi portrayed on the cover of The Sins of Moana.

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. 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.

In Rome, she started working as a model and studied acting. 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, Prime Minister of Italy from 1983 to 1987. Through his intervention, she got a job at Rai Television on a children's entertainment program. The same year (1981) she performed her first hardcore movie, Valentina, ragazza in calore ("Valentina, Girl in Heat"), without being credited. A minor scandal ensued since, 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.

[edit] Popularity

In 1986 she met Riccardo Schicchi, manager of Diva Futura, the agency of the most famous porn stars like Cicciolina. Her first A-movie in hard core was Fantastica Moana, where she used her real name for the first time. She also took part in the famous Curve Deliziose (Delicious curves) next to Cicciolina others, the first live show in Italy where naked models would masturbate on the stage. This caused scandal and accusations of outragious obscenity. She became a 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). Pozzi's appearances on TV also caused scandal. In the show 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 was often shown on the cover. Also appreciated was her distincitve intelligence, defying the cliché of the brainless pinup. She cultivated intellectuals, writers, and artists such as Mario Schifano or Dario Bellezza. This was the first time a porn-star became so popular in every day life. And she was the first to show that porn does not always involve shame and repentance.

[edit] Early 1990s

Moana was conscious of her role in show business. In interviews she always spoke of what she wanted to be for 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 her lovers. The list included actors like Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Roberto Benigni and Massimo Troisi, soccer players like Paulo Roberto Falcão 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, whose political program included legaliziation of brothels, better sex education and the creation of "love parks". No one was elected, but her popularity reached its pinnacle and the best Italian TV anchors wanted to interview her. Stylist Karl Lagerfeld wanted her on the catwalk in 1993. Moana Pozzi became so popular that she was a protagonist for an animated cartoon created by the famous Italian cartoonist Mario Verger, with herself co-directing. This film, entitled Moanaland (1994), aired frequently on Italian television in Blob, and in telecasts dedicated to the actress. Again Verger, by himself, dedicated to Moana Pozzi another cartoon, I Remember Moana, 1995, that gained praise by film critics Marco Giusti and Enrico Ghezzi, and was transmitted in Fuori Orario. It also won a Special Mention at the Erotic Film Festival in USA.

Her sister Mima became a porn actress as well with the stage name of Baby Pozzi.

[edit] Death and controversy

In summer 1994 she suddenly started feeling sick, unable to eat without vomiting and increasingly losing weight. She took time off and traveled to India with her secret husband Antonio Di Ciesco. She returned looking very ill and had to enter a clinic in Lyon, France, just out of Italy's popularity, near to the family.

She died suddenly on September 15, 1994 at the age of 33 of liver cancer (according to the tabloid press of AIDS, but that was just a fake rumour). News of her death broke on September 17. Only her family and some close colleagues knew about her sickness, and on TV she was still shown healthy and smiling in programs recorded before the end of summer. No funeral ceremony took place and she received no obituary.

Rumours about her still living in the USA or in India began circulating immediately. Her family's silence gave more impulse to that. Her death in a foreign country also made it harder to check the death certificate.

On the 10th anniversary of her death (2004) new rumours about her sudden disappearance resurfaced. The court of justice of Rome opened a new file in order to find out whether she was alive or dead. In December 2005 the Italian TV show Chi l'ha visto? presented for the first time the official death certificate of a Lyon cemetery, recording the exact day of the actress's death. Interviews with the family finally confirmed the circumstances. Her husband Antonio di Ciesco was also interviewed for the first time in 1995. Also shown was the unmarked grave in the "Pozzi" burial plot in Lerma, near Alessandria in Piedmont, northern Italy.

Her brother Simone, whom she was especially close to, revealed in February 2006 on the same TV programme that he was actually the son of Moana, and not her brother. Moana's mother confirmed this some time ago. He wrote a book exposing the truth, published in 2006. The book reveals for the first time, Moana's personality, her differing relations with the other members of the family (especially with her sister Mima) and the description of her illness and death.

On April 2nd, 2007, her husband Antonio Di Ciesco revealed to the newspaper "Il Messaggero" that during her final days, Moana had asked him to help her dying. He euthanized her by letting air enter her IV.

[edit] Success

Moana Pozzi performed in about 100 porn movies, mostly in Italy, some in Los Angeles with Gerard Damiano as director. She sold about 1 million videotapes. She graced the covers of 50 major magazines, not including pictorials in porn magazines. She was reportedly worth more than 50 billion 1990 Italian liras, about 40 million Euros. Some of her profits were donated posthumously to funding medical research on tumors.

The Italian movie Guardami ("Look at Me") is based on her life.

[edit] External links

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