Simonetta Stefanelli
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Simonetta Stefanelli (November 30, 1954) is a an Italian actress, born in Rome, Italy. Stefanelli is best known outside Italy for her role in The Godfather (1972), in which she played Apollonia Vitelli-Corleone, Michael Corleone's (played by Al Pacino) wife. Simonetta Stefanelli was only 17 years old when she was filmed in the role of Michael Corleone's love of his life, Apollonia Vitelli, the daughter of a bar owner in rural Sicily. Stefanelli knew no English when she played this role. She was an unknown. But her grace, poise, and instincts for a village girl, her glances, facial movements, pace, her total look, captured and projected the reserve, mood and world of mutual attraction in a traditional village.
She also appeared in more than a dozen Italian films, sometimes in leading roles. In the 1992 movie Le Amiche del Cuore (a.k.a. Close Friends), she plays the character Giuliana.
Stefanelli was married to the actor/director Michele Placido, with whom she appeared in a number of films including the 1975 erotic drama Peccati in famiglia . They had three children together, one is Violante Placido, but divorced in 1994.
For many years she has lived with the burden of people consistently claiming that she has died in one manner or another. In an article on the Newsday website on October 23, 2007 she explains how difficult it has been for her to deal with this.
"I lost [clients] because ... many people don't call me," she said.
--The false reports faced by Stefanelli, which haven't stopped even with the help of a lawyer in Italy, are examples of how false news can persist on the Internet.
--Stefanelli remembered getting calls from friends, some in tears, who thought she was dead. After getting a recent condolence message from a Newsday report.
She decided to talk to Newsday because she recently opened a boutique on Rome's Via Chiana, called Simo Bloom, and wants people to know she is alive.
