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Biography

Monica Bellucci was born on September 30, 1964, in the village of Citta di Castello, in Umbria, Italy. Initially pursuing a career as a lawyer, Monica decided to start modeling in order to help pay for her tuition while at the University of Perugia. But of course, the glamorous life of a model -- which includes travel and a sweet income -- tempted Monica away from her law studies. In 1988, Monica moved to one of Europe's fashion centers -- Milan.



There, she signed with Elite Model Management and found plenty of modeling work. By 1989, Monica was making it big in Paris and across the Atlantic, in New York. But although she had achieved huge success in so little time as a model (posing for Dolce & Gabbana and French Elle), Monica thrived for more. She made the transition to acting -- a very popular trend that models Laetitia Casta, James King and Estella Warren have done successfully -- and began taking acting classes. Bellucci is married to fellow actor Vincent Cassel, with whom she has appeared in several films and had a daughter, named Deva (born September 12, 2004).



In 2004, while pregnant with her daughter, Bellucci posed nude for the Italian Vanity Fair Magazine in protest against Italian laws that allow only married couples to use in-vitro fertilization and that prevent the use of donor sperm. In a documentary about the film, The Big Question, she stated: "I am an Agnostic, even though I respect and am interested in all religions. If there's something I believe in, it's a mysterious energy; the one that fills the oceans during tides, the one that unites nature and beings." In 2003, Belucci starred in Tears of the Sun as a Roman Catholic doctor and in the 2005 fantasy film The Brothers Grimm as a beautiful evil queen.



Her latest films are The Stone Council, directed by the Frenchman Guillaume Nicloux (2006) and Manuale d'amore 2 (2007) where she portrays a physiotherapist in the first segment of the film who is object of the desire of her patient. She was supposed to be seen portraying Indian politician Sonia Gandhi in the biopic Sonia, originally planned for release in 2007 but now shelved. September 2007 saw the release of Shoot 'Em Up, where she plays a prostitute opposite Clive Owen. She dubbed her own voice for the French and Italian releases of the film. She is currently filming Le Deuxième souffle, an Alain Corneau thriller with Daniel Auteuil, Michel Blanc and former football player Eric Cantona.