She was born in Genoa, Liguria to a well-off family. Her mother encouraged her showbusiness ambitions, helping her to study privately at a drama school. She also took part in beauty contests. When she was 14 she won the Miss Liguria beauty contest, moving into modelling jobs, with photographs in important magazines, including Life.
She began a promising acting career in the post-neorealist cinema of the 1950s. She was noticed by film producer Franco Cristaldi, who paired her with Marcello Mastroianni in Piece of the Sky in 1959. More important was her second film for him, La sfida (The Challenge), directed by Francesco Rosi, where she made a name for her powerful but sensitive performance as a Neapolitan girl, inspired by the real-life character of Pupetta Maresca. The film was well received at the 1958 Venice Film Festival.
Schiaffino was launched as the "Italian Hedy Lamarr". However, she would have been more appropriately introduced as the new Italian sex goddess after Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia Loren, but in the early 1960s that role was passing to Claudia Cardinale.

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