Asia Argento

Asia's one of those actresses who looks a lot hotter in print than she does in pictures.

It's a trait she seems to have inherited from her father, Dario Argento, the George Romero of Italy. To read about his films is to get the impression that Argento was to cinema what Stravinsky and Shostakovich were to music, that he had deconstructed the horror genre, reassembled it in a way that no one had ever seen, and incidentally changed the whole medium forever. And indeed, his films have won their share of awards and he himself the title of "Best New Director" and "The Alfred Hitchcock of Italy". To actually see his films, however, is another matter entirely: A horror-aficionado friend of mine once rented the award-winning Suspiria (considered by many to be Argento's masterpiece), but between the corny special effects and lighting, the disappearing plot, and the irritatingly constant and monotonous soundtrack, my friend lost all her movie-picking rights and I gained a new appreciation for all the crappy horror flicks made here in the U.S.

The Emperor's new clothes that have hidden the naked mediocrity of Dario's work for so long then fell to Asia as hand-me-downs. To see her without knowing anything about her is to behold a generally unremarkable woman distinguished only by her mural-like tattoos. But wrapped in the mantle of drama and controversy as she has been since her birth (when the registration office refused to accept her name and christened her "Aria" instead), she starts to look a lot more interesting. Between her acting awards (she's been acting since she was nine), music career, frequent nudity in print and film (including one infamously directed by her own father), alleged hit-and-run incident, her family's involvement in the horror biz ("Sometimes I think my father gave me life," she once said, "because he needed a lead actress for his films"), and her own horror flick credits, Asia's image in Italy, as near as I can tell, has become a colorful and compelling mix of Christina Ricci, pre-Charmed Rose McGowan, and Marilyn Manson. "Aria" Argento is someone I might not think twice about if I saw her in a film, but "Asia" Argento, Dario's little girl and the Devil's spawn, is harder to ignore. 

                                                                                                                              Also sprach Golem.

http://www.homunculus.com/eikona/argento.html