Ida Galli

From Visconti's Aristocracy to the Mud of the Western

Federico Fellini cast her in a small role in La Dolce Vita when she was barely twenty years old. She wasn't a star yet, but her face fit the decadent Rome of 1960. That brief appearance opened the doors of the major Roman studios to her, at a time when Italian cinema dominated Europe.

And that was only the beginning.

Before turning twenty-five, she had already worked under Luchino Visconti in Il Gattopardo. In that 1963 production she played Carolina and shared the set with Burt Lancaster and Alain Delon. But the Italian industry demanded a speed that art-house cinema couldn't always offer.

The Invention of Evelyn Stewart

In the mid-1960s European cinema set out to conquer the American market through deception. Producers decided that Ida Galli needed a name that sounded Anglo-Saxon to sell their action movies better. Evelyn Stewart was born out of pure commercial necessity in the offices of Rome.

Under that pseudonym, she shot A Pistol for Ringo in 1965 alongside Giuliano Gemma. The film's success typecast her in Spaghetti Westerns for several years. But she took on roles without complaint, because the pace of work in Almería and at the Elios studios was relentless.

The market dictated the name.

She appeared in dozens of B-movie titles, where her presence brought an elegance the genre often neglected. Ida Galli kept the refinement she had learned from Visconti, even when she had to pick up a revolver on cardboard sets.

Blood and Suspense in the Seventies

When interest in cowboy films faded, the actress turned to giallo. In 1971 she took part in La corta noche de las muñecas de cristal under the direction of Aldo Lado. It was one of the strangest productions of her career and helped associate her face with the most sordid psychological thrillers.

She earned 15 million lire for some of her most notable work during this period. In 1977, she worked with Lucio Fulci on Sette note in nero, a film that years later would be championed by directors such as Quentin Tarantino. But for her, it was just another job on a schedule that was beginning to wear thin.

She never stood in front of a camera again.

Her career came to an abrupt halt in the early nineties. In 1990, she shot her last film, Con i piedi per aria, directed by Vincenzo Verdecchi. After that project, she decided to step away from public life permanently and settled in central Italy. Her official filmography lists 63 credits as an actress before she disappeared from the media entirely.