Biography
Valeria Golino is an Italian actress and director. She is best known to English-language audiences for her roles in Rain Man, Big Top Pee-wee, and the two Hot Shots! movies, particularly the olive-in-the-belly-button scene. In addition to the awards David di Donatello, Silver Ribbon, Golden Ciak, and Italian Golden Globe, she is also one of the three actresses who has won the Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival twice.
Known For
Complete Filmography

Fuori
2025
as Goliarda Sapienza
Rome. The 1980s. After the magnum opus The Art of Joy she has been working on for a decade is rejected by the Italian publishing world, writer Goliard...

Feeling Better
2025
Producer
A man spends peacefully his days in hospital without too many worries. He has been hospitalized for a while but that condition seems like the best way...

Maria
2024
as Yakinthi Callas
Maria Callas, the world's greatest opera singer, lives the last days of her life in 1970s Paris, as she confronts her identity and life.

Volonté: The Man of a Thousand Faces
2024
as Self
A documentary exploring the life and legacy of renowned Italian actor Gian Maria Volonté, featuring insights from his colleagues, family, and never-be...

The Beautiful Game
2024
as Gabriella
A group of advocates to end homelessness organize an annual tournament for homeless people to compete in a series of football matches known as The Hom...

I Told You So
2024
as Pupa
In Rome, during a January weekend a sudden heatwave arrives. The sun is initially pleasant, but the heat quickly escalates to a frightening degree, re...

The Art of Joy by Goliarda Sapienza: Writing for Emancipation
2023
as Self
Between 1967 and 1976, Italian writer Goliarda Sapienza (1924-76) wrote The Art of Joy, a subversive novel about the dazzling social ascent of a rebel...

Marcel!
2022
as Analyst
The young girl, an insomniac. The mother, an artist. The dog, named Marcel. The little girl loves her mother immensely, but her mother loves Marcel mo...

The Invisible Thread
2022
Producer
The teenage son of two fathers makes a documentary film about his parents but is surprised when a real-life plot twist occurs in his family.

The Catholic School
2021
as Ilaria Arbus
Three well-off young men—former students at Rome’s prestigious all-boys Catholic high school San Leone Magno—brutally tortured, raped, and murdered tw...

Blue Eyes
2021
as Valeria

Land of the Sons
2021
as La strega
Civilisation is coming to an end. The death of his only relative gives a feral boy the pretext to journey beyond the confines of his home environment;...

Un confine incerto
2021
as Paola Cristiani

Fortuna
2021
as Rita / Gina
Fortuna (6 years old) lives with her mother in an anonymous suburb. She spends her time with two playmates, Nicola and Anna, dreaming of being Nancy, ...

Raphael: The Young Prodigy
2021
Raphael: The Young Prodigy tells the story of the artist from Urbino, beginning with his extraordinary early portraits of women - the Mother, the Frie...

You Came Back
2020
as Perla
Marco and Anita discover they are expecting a child. Finally a ray of light in Marco’s life after his heartbreak following the loss of Leo, his first ...

Volare
2019
as Elisa
The true story of Andrea and Franco Antonello, a father and autistic son who traveled by motorbike for three months between the United States and Sout...

Adults in the Room
2019
as Danae Stratou
A universal theme: a story of people trapped in an inhuman network of power. The brutal circle of the Eurogroup meetings, who impose on Greece the dic...

Portrait of a Lady on Fire
2019
as La Comtesse
On an isolated island in Brittany at the end of the eighteenth century, a female painter is obliged to paint a wedding portrait of a young woman.

5 Is the Perfect Number
2019
as Rita
Peppino, a retired hitman for the Camorra, has now fully passed on his job and know-how to his single son, Nino. But when Nino is brutally assassinate...

Casanova, Last Love
2019
as La Cornelys
Year 1763. Forced into exile, the famous libertine Giacomo Casanova leaves Paris and travels to London, where he meets Marianne de Charpillon, a young...

Euphoria
2018
Story, Screenplay, Director
Matteo is a young successful businessman, audacious, charming and energetic. Ettore instead, is a calm, righteous, second grade teacher always living ...

The Summer House
2018
as Elena
A large and beautiful property on the French Riviera. A place that seems out of time and sheltered from the rest of the world. Anna goes there with he...

Daughter of Mine
2018
as Tina
A daughter torn between two mothers, one who raised her with love and her biological mother, who instinctively claims her back.

The Invisible Boy: Second Generation
2018
as Giovanna
Three years later Michele (The Invisible boy) meets his mother and his twin sister. Both have stories and superpowers but their intentions may not be ...

The Stand-In
2017
A small film crew is wandering about Marrakesh and the surrounding desert. They are looking for locations for the remake of an American film in which ...

Emma
2017
as Emma
Teo has a good job, a fiancee, a lover, no intention to assume any responsibility in his life. Meeting Emma, a blind woman, will upset his convictions...

Julian Schnabel: A Private Portrait
2017
Producer
A chronicle of the personal life and public career of the celebrated artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel.

La vita possibile
2016
as Carla
Anna and her son Valerio run away from a husband and a father who has destroyed the love of their family with beatings and anger. They seek refuge in ...

The Very Private Life of Mister Sim
2015
as Luigia
Mister Sim is of no concern whatsoever. At least, this is what he thinks about himself. His wife has left him, his job has left him, and when goes to ...

For Your Love
2015
as Anna Ruotolo
An extremely mannered and increasingly preposterous tale of a fortysomething woman who has to deal with an abusive, double-dealing husband and a hands...

The Time of a Young Man About to Kill
2015
Co-Producer
In the mountains of Northern Albania, a young man seeks revenge for his father's death. The murderer has disappeared a few months ago and the police i...

An Italian Name
2015
as Betta Pontecorvo
Paolo is an outgoing and handsome real estate broker married to Simona, a beautiful woman from the rough outskirts of Rome who has become an author of...

The Invisible Boy
2014
as Giovanna
Michele is thirteen year old, shy, unpopular at school, and in love with Stella. After wearing a costume for a Halloween party, he finds out that he's...

Jacky in the Kingdom of Women
2014
as Bradi Vune
In a country where women are in charge, a man goes to unusual lengths to make his dream of marrying the daughter of a military leader come true.

Human Capital
2013
as Roberta
The destinies of two families are irrevocably tied together after a cyclist is hit off the road by a jeep in the night before Christmas Eve.

Like the Wind
2013
as Armida Miserere
The last few years in the life of Armida Miserere, female jail director who committed suicide

Honey
2013
Director, Screenplay, Story
Irene, nicknamed 'Miele', has devote herself to people looking for help, and tries to alleviate their suffering even when they make extreme decisions....

Nuts
2013
as Giovanna
François has everything he could ever want, until he is kicked out of the house by his wife after his umpteenth slip up; after moving back in with his...

Double
2012
Producer
«Destroy your ego» states writing on a wall left by a friend who died in tragic circumstances. The sentence triggers a thought process in the author’...

Kryptonite!
2011
as Rosaria
Set in 1970s Naples, bullied nine year-old Peppino is watching the world around him as his extended dysfunctional family change. Psychedelic flower po...

A Butterfly Kiss
2011
as Billie
Billie and Louis have the good fortune of loving each other passionately and of having a family. But then one day terrible news turns their existence ...

La scuola è finita
2010
as Daria Quarenghi
Some people say that school days are the best day of our lives... but there are plenty of exceptions. When chronically bored student Alex seems to hav...

Portrait Of My Father
2010
as Self
A labor of love documentary, in which a daughter, with the help of various talking heads, looks back on the life work of her father.

Dark Love
2010
as Psychologist
The aftermath of a rape seen through the parallel lives of the assailant and victim as they try to redeem and rebuild their lives respectively.

Armandino e il Madre
2010
Writer, Director
An italian short comedy

The Cézanne Affair
2009
as Franca Rossetti
Gabriele returns home in southern Italy to bid farewell to his father Ernesto, a former stationmaster in a small town not far from Bari. The old man r...

The French Kissers
2009
as La fille de la vidéo
An awkward adolescent boy and his angst-ridden friends try their best to fit in amongst a cast of varied characters.

Giulia Doesn't Date at Night
2009
as Giulia
Guido, an acclaimed author, leads an idyllic life with his beautiful wife and teenage daughter. But despite his seemingly perfect existence, Guido's r...

The Germans' Factory
2008
as Anna

Ca$h
2008
as Julia
A man meets up with two "good guys" to recover what is unlawfully his, taking them on his whirlwind ride, doing things they never would have imagined,...

Quiet Chaos
2008
as Marta
Pietro is a successful businessman with a wife and a daughter. One day he helps his brother save two women from drowning at the beach. When he returns...

Actresses
2007
as Nathalia Petrovna
Marcelline is an actress. Forty, single and childless, she begins rehearsals for Turgenev’s A Month in the Country. Denis, the director, admires her g...

Don't Waste Your Time, Johnny!
2007
as Annamaria
A talented guitarist tries to make a living out of his music, ending up to collaborate with an unreliable manager and a famous pianist.

The Girl by the Lake
2007
as Chiara Canali
A cop investigates the murder of a beautiful teen girl left naked by a lake.

Black Sun
2007
as Agata
After learning the identity of the man who killed her husband, a young widow struggles with whether to forgive the killer or avenge her husband's deat...

My Place in the Sun
2007
as Sandra
Three couples and a single guy, from different social and career backgrounds, and of various ages, struggle with finding happiness in their lives.

Our Country
2006
as Rita
Set in Milan, where people's lives are invisibly lead by money in its different shapes: too much, too little, stolen, earned, visible and even impalpa...

Mario's War
2006
as Giulia
A court takes 9-year-old Mario away from his abusive family and entrusts him to a childless couple. For the three of them, living together is difficul...
Just Five Minutes
2006
as Valeria
A Donatello award nominated short feature about the difficulties faced by a wheelchair bound journalist who is trying to conduct an interview at the ...

Olé !
2005
as Carmen Holgado
Ramon Holgado is the driver of a big boss, as well as his confidant, his golf partner, and the alibi of his escapades. His wife, Carmen, dreams of ret...

Texas
2005
as Maria
Enrico, Carlo, Davide, Cinzia, Elisa. Three Saturdays in the life of a group of friends in a quiet town in Piedmont. One night in November, one in Dec...

36th Precinct
2004
as Camille Vrinks
In Paris, two cops are competing for the vacant job of chief of police, in the middle of the search for a gang of violent thieves. The movie is direct...

Alive
2004
as Elisa
To regain the one he loves and his children, Alex Meyer, composer and director of musicals, hard hit by his marital breakdown dating back three years,...

San Antonio
2004
as L'Italienne
While a terrorist epidemy strikes the world leaders, the commissaire San-Antonio and his partner, the lieutenant Bérurier, have to escort the French a...

Take Me Away
2003
as Luciana
Thirteen-year-old Giampiero is the teenage son of a decaying family. He gets to know Romana, a girl of his age, and they fall for each other. The trou...

Frida
2002
as Lupe Marín
A biography of artist Frida Kahlo, who channeled the pain of a crippling injury and her tempestuous marriage into her work.

Respiro
2002
as Grazia
Grazia is a free-spirited mother-of-three married to shy fisherman Pietro and living on the idyllic but isolated island of Lampedusa in the Mediterran...

L'inverno
2002
as Anna
It's the story of a couple with some relationship's problems who meet another couple. It's a drama of incommunicability.

Hotel
2001
as Italian Actress
A sex worker, a hired killer, and a movie crew cross paths in a Venice hotel where human meat is on the menu.

Word of Honour
2001
as Afroditi
Drama set in 1940 about a peasant who traverses Cyprus to pray at a monastery.

Against the wind
2000
as Nina

Spanish Judges
2000
as Jamie
A con-artist hires two low-lifes to cover him during a deal, ending with three criminals, two dueling pistols, and one night they'll never forget

Ivansxtc
2000
as Constanza Vero
Ivan Beckman, Hollywood's most sought-after talent agent, the darling and crown prince of La La Land, is dead. How and why did it happen? Was it drugs...

Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her
2000
as Lilly (segment "Goodnight Lilly, Goodnight Christine")
In California, a group of women struggle with personal problems as their paths intertwine in unexpected ways. Dr. Elaine Keener, the sole caretaker fo...

Last Harem
1999
as Anita
A story of the impossible love between one of the Sultan's concubines and one of his eunuchs in a harem at the end of the Ottoman Empire.
Típota
1999
as L'attrice
A Donatello award nominated short drama about a wandering family, including a lady about to give birth, who get caught up in a the filming of a scene ...

Side Streets
1998
as Sylvie Otti
The lives of diverse characters in each of New York City's five boroughs overlap.

Shooting the Moon
1998
as Silvia
14-year-old Siddharta, wise beyond his age, has to deal every day with his heroin-addict mother Silvia and an absent father. One day, his four-year-ol...

Le acrobate
1997
as Maria
A chemical analyst and a supermarket clerk strike up a friendship after they are brought together by the death of an elderly woman.

An Occasional Hell
1996
as Elizabeth Laughton
A former policeman-turned college professor of forensics, is asked by a widow to solve the murder of her unfaithful husband and the disappearance of h...

Escoriandoli
1996
as Ida
Slaughter of the Cock
1996
as Wife
Longing for a better life, Evagoras and Onisilios decide to emigrate to the Persian Gulf to earn enough money to start their own business. When they r...

Escape from L.A.
1996
as Taslima
Into the 9.6-quaked Los Angeles of 2013 comes Snake Plissken. His job: wade through L.A.'s ruined landmarks to retrieve a doomsday device.

Four Rooms
1995
as Athena
It's Ted the Bellhop's first night on the job...and the hotel's very unusual guests are about to place him in some outrageous predicaments. It seems t...

Red Wind
1995
as Eugenie Kolchenko
In 1940s, sympathetic African American L.A. shamus Philip Marlowe helps a dame in trouble whose lovers are offing each other over a possibly fake pear...

Leaving Las Vegas
1995
as Terri
Ben Sanderson, an alcoholic Hollywood screenwriter who lost everything because of his drinking, arrives in Las Vegas to drink himself to death. There,...
Submission
1995
Benicio del Toro's 1995 short film

Like Two Crocodiles
1995
as Marta
A successful Italian man living in Paris returns to Italy to exact financial revenge upon his cruel half-brothers in this Italian-French drama. Gabrie...

Immortal Beloved
1994
as Giulietta Guicciardi
A chronicle of the life of infamous classical composer Ludwig van Beethoven and his painful struggle with hearing loss. Following Beethoven's death in...

Clean Slate
1994
as Sarah Novak / Beth Holly
Pogue is a private eye with a problem: every morning when he wakes up, he has total amnesia, waking up with a 'blank slate'. Since he is in the middle...

Hot Shots! Part Deux
1993
as Ramada Rodham Hayman
Topper Harley is found to be working as an odd-job-man in a monastery. The CIA want him to lead a rescue mission into Iraq, to rescue the last rescue ...

Hearts of Hot Shots! Part Deux—A Filmmaker's Apology
1993
As part of the film's promotion, a mockumentary was aired on HBO. Titled Hearts of Hot Shots! Part Deux—A Filmmaker's Apology, the mockumentary parodi...

Puerto Escondido
1992
as Anita
Targeted by a dirty cop after witnessing a murder, bank clerk Mario flees to Puerto Escondido, Mexico, where a couple of oddball Italian expats drags ...

The Indian Runner
1991
as Maria
Two brothers cannot overcome their opposite perceptions of life. One brother sees and feels bad in everyone and everything, subsequently he is violent...

Year of the Gun
1991
as Lia
American novelist David Raybourne accidentally becomes entangled in the Red Brigade's terrorist plan to kidnap Italian Premier Aldo Moro during a rese...

Hot Shots!
1991
as Ramada Thompson / Scarlett O'Hara / Lois Lane
The gang that created Airplane and The Naked Gun sets its sights on Top Gun in this often hilarious spoof starring Charlie Sheen, who previously only ...

The King's Whore
1990
as Jeanne de Luynes
Set in the 17th-century, an Italian nobleman weds an impoverished countess, who is wooed by the King of Piedmont and faces pressure from his entire co...

Traces of an Amorous Life
1990
as Lucia Fontana
What is love? In how many forms can it manifest itself? 14 short episodes about love, spanning generations of lovers...to answer.

Torrents of Spring
1989
as Gemma Rosselli
In 1840, a young Russian aristocrat, Dimitri Sanin, is returning home after a long tour of Europe. In Germany, he falls in love with a beautiful pastr...

Rain Man
1988
as Susanna
When car dealer Charlie Babbitt learns that his estranged father has died, he returns home to Cincinnati, where he discovers that he has a savant olde...

Big Top Pee-wee
1988
as Gina Piccolapupula
Paul Reubens stars as Pee-wee Herman in his second full-length film about a farmer who joins the circus after a storm drops a big tent in his front ya...

Love and Fear
1988
as Sandra
Three sisters, played by Fanny Ardant, Greta Scacchi and Valeria Golino, struggle with their illusions, goals and desires in Margarethe von Trotta’s f...

The Gold Rimmed Glasses
1987
as Nora Treves
A Jewish couple and a homosexual doctor fall to prejudice and scandal in 1938 Italy.

Last Summer in Tangiers
1987
as Claudia Marchetti
In 1956, with the independence of Morocco, the Fedala conference in Tangier is set in a city of turmoil.

Storia d'amore
1986
as Bruna
A young woman struggles to overcome the dehumanization of poverty.

Detective School Dropouts
1986
as Katerina
Two bumbling private detectives get themselves hired to find a missing person. They find themselves in the middle of a mob war when it turns out that ...

My Dearest Son
1985
as Francesca
A respectable lawyer finds out his son is a heroin addict. Heartbroken, he'll do anything to help his only child, even if it means sharing his hell.

Little Flames
1985
as Mara
Tommaso, a quiet, thoughtful child of five, lives in a world of his own, conversing daily with three imaginary friends. Seemingly loved by his parents...

Blind Date
1984
as Girl in Bikini
A man goes blind when remembering his lost girlfriend, but the doctors can't find anything wrong with his eyes. They fit him with an experimental devi...

A Joke of Destiny, Lying in Wait Around the Corner Like a Street Bandit
1983
as Adalgisa De Andreiis
The Minister of the Interior gets stuck in his ultra-technological car and a rival Member of Parliament tries desperately to help him, while chaos spr...
Jours de chance
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Breve storia d'amore
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La gioia
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