Luciana Paluzzi

Luciana Paluzzi (born 10 June 1937) is an Italian actress. She 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, The Klansman and The Sensuous Nurse. Paluzzi 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's who was invited for dinner and happened to be looking for a young actress doing 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.