INTERVIEW

Well, it seems that interviews with Valeria are few in number, but I finally found one in the British movie magazine PREMIERE (April 95 edition).  In case You know of other interviews You are welcome to  E-Mail me.   This interview  was published when "Immortal Beloved" was released in Europe.

Interview starts:
NOT LONG lNTO MY ENCOUNTER WITH Valeria Golino, the Italian actress with the crystal blue eyes aims them right into mine and declares her take on the union we're in the throes of participating in: the celebrity interview.
"We are having a conversation here," she says thoughtfully, "and I'm trying to make sure you think I'm smart and have morals; and then whatever I say is going to be very close to a picture of me in underwear or some dress that's really, really small trying to keep my titties from showing. The message is two different people."
Golino's refreshing candour leads me to believe that the four coffees she's had today (more than usual) and the zero cigarettes (less) have congealed in her brain to form some sort of truth serum. When was the last time you had an actress tell you she was "bored" with herself on screen?
"If I don't start surprising myself a little," says Golino, "I'm going to change jobs. I love doing this but I'm kind of on automatic pilot now. I keep working and I do things that are believable, but who gives a shit, you know? I want to be unbelievable."
Now 28, the daughter of an Italian father and a Greek mother looks to be shifting out of her self-dubbed auto-pilot with Immortal Beloved. Directed by Candyman's Bernard Rose and starring Gary Oldman and Isabella Rossellini, the film is based on speculation resulting from a love letter written by Beethoven - the composer, not the dog- to his unnamed "Immortal Beloved. " Golino plays one of several women who may have been the letter's intended addressee, an Italian countess whose fling with the lusty Ludwig, shown in flashback, commences the film's musical mystery tour.
"I'm a total groupie in the movie," Golino laughs about her role. "My character wasn't in love with him. She was in love with the idea of him. "
But at least you got him when he was in his sexual prime.
"Definitely," Golino smiles wickedly. "When he was still young and good-looking."
The same can also be said of Golino, as the accompanying photos will attest, although Immortal Beloved offers zero in the way of steamy piano-stool sex scenes. That's just fine by Golino, who, despite being selected to play the love interest opposite such Hollywood leading men as Tom Cruise (Rain Man), Charlie Sheen (both Hot Shots movies) and the eminently shaggable Pee-Wee Herman (Big Top Pee-Wee), is quick to dismiss her own desirability.
"I like to play sexy. I like to play with my vanity, but when I see it I go, 'My God,"' Golino says disgustedly. "I wish I could have for one second, incredible, cruel beauty, on top of everything, you know." Some would argue that she already does. "Well," she sniffs, "the screen makes miracles."
Dividing her time between her home in the Hollywood Hills and Rome, the self-deprecating Italian ragazza returns to her native country at least once a month to see her beau of two years' standing, also an actor. She must have racked up a ton of frequent flyer miles. "I don't even use them, " she admits. "I'm too stupid to do that. Besides, I want to pay for my spoiled life. It's bad enough that I live so comfortably. If I don't even pay for it, it's a sin." Amore, however, is not the only reason for Golino's bi-continental existence. In between American projects, she maintains her status as one of the few Hollywood actresses who regularly work in another language, as well as being one of the few who can handle her own dubbing duties. Ironically, when she first began working in Amencan films, her voice was greeted with a muted reaction back home.
"I dubbed Rain Man into Italian," she recalls, "and it was a disaster because the people that dub the movies have these big theatrical voices, and my voice in between the other two sounded so ridiculous. But I feel good about Immortal Beloved. Every other actor is going to be with different voices and I'm going to be with my own voice. " Indeed, Golino's versatility has helped her achieve an international profile and also ensures that when casting directors are scouring their lists for babes with accents, she's resting at the top. Next up is a role in Four Rooms, the quadrilateral directing effort from Quentin Tarantino, Allison Anders, Robert Rodriguez and Alexandre Rockwell, about a bellboy, explains Golino, "who goes into four different hotel rooms the night of New Year's Eve."
Golino is in Anders's episode (and room), playing the high priestess of a coven of witches that also includes Madonna, lone Skye, Lili Taylor and British actress Sammi Davis. As part of her Four Rooms witch shtick, Golino tells me, she repeatedly sucks her cheeks in tightly, then blows, emitting, with the aid of postproduction special effects, lightning-like sparks. "I chose that," she explains, "because I remember right before my brother used to beat me up when we were kids he would go" - the actress sucks in, then blows ferociously - "and then I knew it was coming."
As if that weren't bewitching enough, Golino also had to lead her fellow witches in an improvisational dance, though, she admits, when the scene was actually shot they all followed another member of the coven.
"Everyone was looking at Madonna when we were dancing," she confesses. "The moment she would stop, I would stop."
And what was it like playing the Material Girl's superior?
"It was fun," Golino replies coolly. "I think Allison chose me to be the high priestess before Madonna was cast, because I guess if she'd known, she would have chosen Madonna. I don't know. I think she had written the part thinking of me, as a foreigner with a Mediterranean accent. But it was really nice to work with Madonna. She has this great, dry sense of humour."
Golino describes her witchy Four Rooms fashion ensemble as a sheer, backless slip-like number and a tattoo of a serpent that weaves around the large scar on her back, the result of several surgeries for scoliosis. For years, Golino had to wear a back brace to try to correct the curvature in her spine. "I had achieved a way to walk and a way to wear things that unless you touched me, you wouldn't know. Then at 13, they said, 'You have to wear it for another six years and if nothing happens, then we'll have surgery.'And my mom said, 'No, we'll have the surgery now."'
After the surgery, Golino, at the age of 17, landed her first role in Italian director Lena Wertmüller's A Joke Of Destiny Lying In Wait Around The Corner Like A Robber. But the piece of steel that had been placed in her back began moving, and Golino was forced to abandon the film (although she made the final cut) to have more surgery.
"I'm much better now," she insists. "Every once in a while I'll have pain so that I have to be in bed, or I'll take a pill."
Asked if she would ever go under the knife for more cosmetic reasons, the Mediterranean beauty remarks, "I don't want to be in the position, at 40 or 50, where I have to care about my physical aspect more than I would need to for my health. I'm telling you this now. Probably at 45 you'll see me and I'll have huge boobs and my face will be tightened up. You're going to say, 'What happened?' And I'll say, 'Nothing."'
For the moment, a lot is happening for Valeria Golino. Aside from Immortal Beloved and Four Rooms, she recently completed work on Red Wind, a made-for-cable movie directed by Europa Europa's Agnieszka Holland. "I'm the naughty, very Raymond Chandler-esque femme fatale," she says. "I was like a candy bar in a pink negligee and fluffy slippers, kind of coquettish but in a K-Mart sort of way. Today, only a drag queen would dress that way." She'll also be popping up in a cameo role in Leaving Las Vegas, Mike Figgis's low-budget, 1 6mm movie featuring Nicolas Cage as a man who goes to the city in question to dunk himselfto death. "I play the Pretty Girl In The Bar. I had the best time," Golino beams happily. "I would do cameos every day if I could."
Of her co-star Nicolas Cage she says, "He has to be drunk from the beginning to the end of the movie. While I was acting with him I was saying to myself, 'Maybe he's overacting here. Maybe he's going a little too far.' Then when we went to see the dailies, he was perfect."
Does Golino think she ever goes too far?
"Hardly," she says sarcastically.
What about not far enough?
"I do think I should be more courageous," she admits, a trace of that "bored with myself on screen" frustration resurfacing. "On the other hand, I haven't had in the last years, particularly working in America, the space or the roles to do anything more. I'd rather not be seen at all than be seen more than my role requires me to be."

COURTESY:

PREMIERE UK APRIL 1995