Goodbye to Anna Kanakis, actress and author, former very young Miss Italy. She died yesterday at the age of 61 and the funeral will take place in Rome on November 24th at the church of San Salvatore in Lauro.
Born in Messina to a Greek father and a Sicilian mother, she was only 15 years old when she was chosen Miss Italy in Sant’Eufemia d’Aspromonte: she was the first queen so young after a change in the rules. In 1981 she took part in Miss Universe.
Kanakis was brunette, elegant, Mediterranean and had magnificent golden eyes. She began her career as a model and then began working as an actress on the advice of Giuseppe Tornatore. She appeared in over 30 films and television dramas in the 80s. From the beginning there were many brilliant comedies, directed by Castellano and Pipolo and by Sergio Martino in Attila Flagello di Dio (1982), Eye, Evil Eye, Parsley and Fennel (1983), Acapulco, first beach… left ( 1983), but with Luigi Magni, she made her film debut in 1989 in the exuberant role of “Bandit” in “O Re” with Giancarlo Giannini and Ornella Muti, followed in the same year by Molière’s “L’Avaro” directed by Tonino Cervi and starring Alberto Sordi. Since the end of the 80s, Kanakis has been the protagonist on television from Michelangelo directed by Jerry London to the series Vento di Ponente (2002), L’Inchiesta (2006) directed by Giulio Base and La Terza Verità (2007) directed by Stefano Really. After a move into politics – national director of culture and entertainment for the Democratic Union of the Republic (UDR) party founded by Francesco Cossiga – her second life as a writer.
In 2010 he made his debut with the novel “You are mine when you sleep”. “The Last Scandalous Love of George Sand” (Marsilio Editori). In 2011, the second novel Goebbels’ Lover (Marsilio Editori) was published about the story of Lída Baarová, a Czechoslovak actress who was the lover of the Nazi hierarch in 1938. The most recent work is from 2022: Do Not Condemn Me (Baldini and Castoldi). ), another historical novel, this time about Baron Jacques d’Adelsward Fersen. After a first marriage at a very young age to the musician Claudio Simonetti, from whom she divorced a few years later, her second marriage followed in 2004 to the Venetian Marco Merati Foscarini, descendant of Marco Foscarini, one of the last Doges of Venice.
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