Pier Angeli

The Weight of a Crystal Gaze

Vittorio De Sica discovered her on a street in Rome when she was just a teenager with eyes too big for her face. He wasn't looking for a professional actress; he needed the mix of purity and fear that Anna Maria Pierangeli projected effortlessly. In 1950, she made her debut in Domani è troppo tardi and won the Nastro d'Argento for Best Actress at just eighteen years old.

It was a meteoric and destructive rise.

Hollywood smelled both money and vulnerability in equal measure. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer offered her a seven-year contract and renamed her Pier Angeli so American audiences wouldn't stumble over her surname. In 1951, she starred in Teresa under the direction of Fred Zinnemann. New York critics called it the most impressive debut since Greta Garbo, but she still felt like an outsider on the California sets.

MGM required her to maintain the image of a European virgin, which sold very well in the magazines of the day. But the reality in the dressing rooms was different. The young actress suffered from anxiety attacks and suffocating family pressure that controlled every dollar she earned.

The Romance Hollywood Wouldn't Allow

In 1954, her life crossed paths with James Dean's in the halls of Warner Bros while she was filming The Silver Chalice. They fell for each other in a desperate, noisy way that fit nobody's plans. Dean was an unpredictable rebel, and she was the crown jewel of a studio that demanded order.

But the actress's mother stepped in with medieval toughness.

He made Pier break up with Dean because of his lack of Catholic faith and his erratic lifestyle. A few weeks later, the actress married singer Vic Damone in a ceremony that contemporary columnists described as a frosty affair. It's said that James Dean waited outside the church, revving his motorcycle so she could hear his protest from the altar.

That marriage was a mistake that lasted four years and ended in a legal battle over custody of their son that ruined both of their reputations.

And the industry began to turn its back on her.

An Empty Suitcase in Beverly Hills

By the late 1950s, leading roles had become scarce. In 1956, she lost the lead role in Somebody Up There Likes Me to Pier Angeli, but the film catapulted Paul Newman to stardom while she was relegated to minor productions. She went to Europe looking for refuge in British cinema and low-budget Italian productions.

In 1960, she filmed The Angry Silence and proved her talent was still intact despite the studios' mistreatment. But the phone stopped ringing as often as before. Hollywood doesn't forgive the aging of actresses whose careers rely on youthful fragility.

She tried to get her career back on track with Sodom and Gomorrah in 1962, but the production was a financial disaster that did nothing for her career. She moved to an apartment in Beverly Hills and began relying on sleeping pills and pills to wake up.

Her friends said she was obsessed with the memory of James Dean.

In 1971, she accepted a role in the low-budget science-fiction film Octaman. It was her last job in front of a camera. On September 10, 1971, her friend Helena Sorrell found her dead in bed from an amphetamine and barbiturate overdose.

The autopsy determined that her death was accidental. She was thirty-nine years old and had barely twenty dollars in her checking account at the time of her death.