Valentina Cortese was born in Milan, Lombardy, Italy, in 1923. She made her movie debut in 1940 and played many "ingenue" parts in Italian films of that period, before making a real sensation in Caccia all'uomo (1948) and Tempesta su Parigi (1948), playing both female leads, Fantine and Cosette (the film was a competent screen adaptation of the Victor Hugo classic "Les misérables"). The international success of the British-made melodrama The Glass Mountain (1949) brought her some Hollywood offers: she was very sensual as a truck-driver's mistress in Jules Dassin's film noir Thieves' Highway (1949) and particularly effective in Robert Wise's thriller The House on Telegraph Hill (1951), in which she portrayed a woman pursued by a killer. She then returned to Europe and worked with many great directors, like Michelangelo Antonioni, who cast her in his Le amiche (1955), and Federico Fellini, who gave her a supporting part in his surrealist fantasy Giulietta degli spiriti (1965). She had an especially robust part in Francois Truffaut's La nuit américaine (1973) as a fading alcoholic movie star (she won a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award Nomination for this). She also followed a fruitful stage career, working with directors like Giorgio Strehler and Franco Zeffirelli and starring in plays like Schiller's "Mary Stewart" (title role) and Wedekind's "Lulu" (title role).