WASHINGTON — Virna Lisi, a multifaceted Italian actress who found herself hostage to the sultry looks that sparked her career, quitting Hollywood in the 1960s after being typecast in bombshell roles, died Thursday in Rome. She was 78.
The cause was cancer, according to Italian media.
A star of Italian cinema by age 20, Ms. Lisi drew international attention for her lissome appeal in dramas and farces.
On the Italian screen, Ms, Lisi had been presented as chic and elegantly sensual, but she was rebranded for US audiences as a skin-baring temptress. Producer Gordon Carroll described her as having ‘‘the high-fashion look of a model in Vogue’’ yet, on camera, ‘‘this animal, this sexual, quality.’’
That quality was put to immediate use in her Hollywood debut, the 1965 comedy ‘‘How to Murder Your Wife.’’ The film starred Jack Lemmon as a cartoonist who impulsively weds Ms. Lisi after she emerges from a birthday cake in a bikini. His initial lust gives way to regret. The role played up her charms and minimized dialogue because of her limited English.
In 1966, she supported Frank Sinatra in the action film ‘‘Assault on a Queen’’ and then played an Italian nurse — again in a bikini — in the tepid comedy ‘‘Not With My Wife, You Don’t!’’ opposite Tony Curtis and George Scott.
‘‘With Jack Lemmon I was a great success,’’ Ms. Lisi told the New York Times decades later. ‘‘They would say, ‘Lisi’s beautiful.’ And I would add, ‘Yes, but she’s also an actress.’ ”
Her ambitions toward more dramatic work went unfulfilled, at least in Hollywood. She turned down roles that emphasized her sexpot allure, including the lead in Roger Vadim’s randy sci-fi film ‘‘Barbarella.’’ Jane Fonda got the part.
Back in Italy, Ms. Lisi won a starring role in the well-received Italian comedy ‘‘The Birds, the Bees and the Italians’’ (1966) and found meatier parts in a career that spanned more than 100 films and TV shows.
Her most acclaimed performance was in ‘‘Queen Margot’’ (1994) as the politically scheming Catherine de’ Medici, the Italian noblewoman who became queen of France in the mid-16th century.
The historical spectacle was regarded by critics as excessively violent and dramatically overripe. But Ms. Lisi, who was rendered almost unrecognizable by unflattering makeup and fat padding, was lauded for her riveting portrayal of evil.
In the Los Angeles Times, Peter Rainer wrote that Ms. Lisi ‘‘gives a terrific dragon-lady performance. . . . Her dark rage is almost comic in its magisterial meanness but Lisi doesn’t camp it up.’’
She won the best actress award for her role at the Cannes Film Festival.
Virna Pieralisi was born in Ancona.