Elsa Martinelli was born in Grosseto, a central Tuscan city, into a struggling family with eight siblings. She had to work from the age of twelve, delivering groceries in Rome, and later worked as a barmaid. At sixteen, she moved to modeling and was soon promoted by well-known designers and a New York magazine editor, who suggested a move to the Big Apple.
Elsa was spotted on a Life magazine cover by Kirk Douglas or his wife, and was soon cast in The Indian Fighter (1955) opposite Douglas. However, her contract was quietly annulled, and she spurned an opportunity to appear in the blockbuster Spartacus (1960). She instead returned to Italy, married Count Franco Mancinelli Scotti di San Vito, and joined the glitterati, becoming friends with Aristotle Onassis and Maria Callas.
Carlo Ponti took Elsa under his wing, and she eventually made a success of her screen career by varying the type of parts she took on and avoiding typecasting. She appeared in Stowaway Girl (1957),where she bewitched an embittered steamboat captain played by Trevor Howard, and in Blood and Roses (1960),an art-house horror movie based on Sheridan Le Fanu's Gothic novella.
In Hatari! (1962),Elsa co-starred as a freelance wildlife photographer on a Tanganyika game farm, torn between affections for baby elephants and 'bring-'em-back-alive' trapper John Wayne. She also appeared in The Pigeon That Took Rome (1962),a wartime comedy where she was the romantic interest of Charlton Heston's army guy.
For the remainder of the '60s, Elsa appeared in a number of international co-productions, including The Oldest Profession (1967) and Madigan's Millions (1968). In 1968, she married Paris Match photographer and furniture designer Willy Rizzo, and began to diversify into designing avant-garde furniture.
By the 1980s, Elsa was active as an interior designer in Rome while still making sporadic screen appearances, primarily in TV series. She was described by La Repubblica as "an icon of style and elegance", and died on July 8, 2017, at the age of 82.
