Ornella Muti: When the Most Beautiful Eyes in the World Blindly Trusted Fraudsters

A mix of Italian temperament from her father and cold Estonian elegance from her mother gave her the face of an innocent angel and eyes that had the depth of an ocean. In 1994, readers of prestigious magazines chose her as one of the most beautiful women in the world. But while she was an unreachable goddess on the screen, in real life she was a vulnerable girl who had incredible bad luck with men, and her desire for love brought her to the absolute bottom several times.

A scandalous start and a betrayed youth

She entered the film world like a hurricane when she was only fourteen years old. Director Damiano Damiani cast her in the movie The Most Beautiful Wife. By irony of fate, this half-child played a girl who is kidnapped, abused, and forced into marriage. The movie had a huge success, but young Francesca, who got the artistic name Ornella Muti from the production, was only learning how to walk in the harsh show business.

At the age of eighteen, the first big life crash arrived. Ornella became pregnant. In the Catholic and conservative Italy of that time, it was a massive scandal — a young, single mother at the peak of her starting career. But the biggest slap was that the father of her daughter Naike did not want to take responsibility for the child and disappeared from her life. But Ornella showed herself as a fighter. She kept her daughter, proudly faced the gossip of the tabloid press, and continued to shoot one movie after another. When she was twenty, she married her film colleague Alessio Orano. She believed she found peace and a home, but the marriage lasted only five years. Alessio could not handle her huge fame and the fact that Ornella was already an international sex symbol desired by the richest men on the planet.

Hollywood disillusion: “They looked at me like an exotic object”

At the beginning of the 1980s, Italy was too small for Ornella. A logical offer came from America. Hollywood wanted a new European diva to follow the fame of Sophia Loren. Ornella got a role in the sci-fi big movie Flash Gordon. The movie made money in cinemas, but for Ornella herself, the stay in the USA was a huge disappointment.

In America, she hit a cold corporate machine. She later remembered that in Hollywood, they build business and career first, and only after that they live. Furthermore, she struggled with a language barrier and did not want to submit to their strict rules and dictates of producers. She felt that they looked at her only as an exotic beauty from Europe, and nobody cared about her real acting talent. Therefore, she refused to play by Hollywood rules, packed her bags, and returned back to Italy. America did not accept her, but Ornella did not regret it. She wanted to live, love, and make movies in an environment she understood.

The second marriage: A financial black hole named Federico Facchinetti

But the worst period of her life was yet to come. In 1988, she met businessman Federico Facchinetti. She fell in love so deeply that she was willing to do anything for him. They had a son and a daughter, and Ornella felt that she finally found family happiness. Federico was charming, confident, and soon took complete control over her finances and career.

However, financial problems soon revealed a terrifying truth. Facchinetti had accumulated enormous debts through unsuccessful business ventures and gambling, and Ornella’s fame and money became deeply entangled in his financial troubles. She refused to believe the reality for a long time; she was blinded by love and family loyalty. When his financial house of cards finally collapsed in the 1990s, Facchinetti faced legal problems connected with tax fraud and financial misconduct. For Ornella, it was a total shock. She discovered that the man she had trusted had left her facing serious financial losses and debts. Luxury properties and millions were gone, and she was left with a broken heart and a mountain of financial problems. A fast and painful divorce followed.

Dinner with Putin and the threat of prison

Bad luck and wrong decisions did not leave her even in her older age. In December 2010, Ornella was supposed to perform in a theatre in the Italian city of Pordenone. But she cancelled the performance at the last moment and sent a medical note to the theatre, saying that due to a severe laryngitis, she could not speak and must stay in bed.

But only a few days later, photographs from St. Petersburg circulated in Italian and world media. Ornella Muti, who was supposedly lying in bed with a fever, was shining at a luxury charity gala evening, sitting at a table directly next to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The theatre immediately sued her for fraud and breach of contract.

A long legal battle followed, which ended with a humiliating verdict for the famous actress. The court eventually sentenced her to eight months in prison, suspended, and imposed a fine. To avoid serving the sentence, she had to pay compensation to the theatre amounting to tens of thousands of euros. Ornella defended herself by saying that she had attended a charity event for sick children, but her reputation suffered a huge blow.

Beauty that remained, but for a high price

Today, Ornella Muti is a grandmother and she still looks incredibly elegant, as if time does not apply to her. She exercises, keeps strict diets, and sometimes appears at fashion shows or in movies. But her life story is a harsh memento. It shows that even the biggest fame, millions on accounts, and the title of the most beautiful woman in the world cannot protect a person from naivety, betrayal of the closest ones, and the blows of fate that hurt exactly same, whether you are a cleaning lady or an icon of the silver screen.