Firearms Friday with Elsa Martinelli

Born in 1935, Italian actress, model, and interior designer Elsa Martinelli began her show business career as a fashion model at the age of 16. After coming to the attention of Kirk Douglas and his wife, who owned a fashion business, her career path was re-directed into movies. 

After a brief sojourn in Hollywood, she returned to Europe where her star rose steadily throughout the late 1950s and kept soaring through the 1960s and 1970s. Throughout her career, Martinelli purposefully sought out a variety of projects to keep from getting typecast, and she played everything from a damsel-in-distress to a vampire, and appeared in everything from period romance films to gritty crime dramas. Although she mostly appeared in Italian productions, she became renowned for her ability to work seamlessly on the multinational productions that were the life's blood of the European film business during the height of her film career.

With the arrival of the 1980s, Martinelli turned a long-time side interest in furniture design and interior decorating in to her main vocation. She continued to accept the occasional role, primarily in Italian television series and movies until her final retirement from acting in 2005. 

Elsa Martinelli passed away in 2017.