Luciana Paluzzi
Luciana Paluzzi is perhaps best known for playing SPECTRE assassin Fiona Volpe in the fourth James Bond film, Thunderball, but she had important roles in notable films of the 1960s and 1970s in both the Italian film industry and Hollywood, including Chuka, The Green Slime, 99 Women, Black Gunn, and The Sensuous Nurse.
She was born in Rome and was brought up there. She went to Milan and studied naval engineering for two years at the Scientific Academy of Milan, being the only woman in her class.
One of her first roles was an uncredited walk-on part in Three Coins in the Fountain (1954), which she got by chance through a friend of her father who was invited for dinner and happened to be looking for a young actress to do a very short two-line role for director Jean Negulesco, thinking Paluzzi might be a fit. Negulesco had not been satisfied with the other actresses so far, but when Paluzzi, who did not plan to become an actress, recited the English line the next day (it was the only English she spoke at that time) she got the role.
Luciana went on to appear in many movies, most of which were made in her native Italy. In her early films, she is credited as Luciana Paoluzzi. In 1957, she came to England to appear in the British war film No Time To Die (also known as Tank Force) alongside Victor Mature where she was directed by Terence Young. She was then cast in the British action drama Sea Fury as the Spanish-born “Josita,” who is fought over by Stanley Baker and Victor McLaglen’s characters.
In 1959, she went to Hollywood under contract with Twentieth Century Fox Television to star as a regular in the 20th Century Fox Television series Five Fingers, which was cancelled after three months. Luciana then played ‘Rafaella’ in 1961’s Return to Peyton Place.
From 1963 to 1965, she almost exclusively appeared in Italian productions. In 1965, Paluzzi was cast as SPECTRE villainess, ‘Fiona Volpe’ (“volpe” is “fox” in Italian) in Terence Young’s THUNDERBALL (1965), for which she is best known.
She had auditioned for the part of the lead Bond girl, ‘Dominetta “Domino” Petacchi’, but producers instead cast Claudine Auger, changing the character’s name from an Italian to a Frenchwoman, and renaming her ‘Dominique Derval.’ Initially crestfallen when informed she did not get the part, Paluzzi rejoiced when told her consolatory prize was the part of ‘Fiona Volpe’, originally planned to be ‘Fiona Kelly’, which she said was “more fun” to play.
Luciana later claimed being a Bond girl was a double-edged sword. In the documentary Bond Girls Are Forever, Paluzzi expressed amazement at the level of fame, publicity, and recognition she received from Thunderball, but as a result of being in such an outlandish film, she felt she was taken less seriously as an actress when returning to the Italian film industry.
Luciana appeared in such films as Muscle Beach Party (1964) and Chuka (1967). She co-starred in the 1969 women in prison film 99 Women.
In 1964 she played the villainess in an episode of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., as the seductive THRUSH agent ‘Angela’ in the first-season episode “The Four Steps Affair” and in the movie version of the show’s pilot episode, “To Trap a Spy.” In 1978 she portrayed journalist Liana Labella in the Hawaii Five-O episode “My Friend, the Enemy”. She also starred in Bonanza, ‘The Dowry’, in 1962. Luciana is retired from films/TV appearances and loves meeting fans of her legacy.