Romina Power - Biography

Biography

Born in Los Angeles, California, Romina Power is the eldest daughter of American actor Tyrone Power and his second wife, actress Linda Christian.

After her parents divorced in 1956 her mother took Romina and her younger sister Taryn to live all around the world but mainly in Mexico and Italy where she and her sister spent much of their childhood, although Romina attended college in England.

Her interest in music was evoked in her childhood by American musicals from the 1950s, Mexican Mariachi bands and Italian music from the 1960s. In her early teens Power discovered The Beatles and Bob Dylan, which inspired her to compose music. After receiving a guitar as a birthday gift, she learned chords and wrote her first songs.

She appeared in several mainly Italian language films from the age of 14, including the 1968 adaptation of the Marquis de Sade's novel Justine directed by Jesus Franco.

She met her singer and actor husband Albano Carrisi whilst acting in films in the 1960s. They married in 1970. In 1975 they formed a singing duo, which became well known in Italy, Germany, Austria, Spain, France, Greece, Latin America, Eastern Europe and the USSR, releasing multiple albums in different languages and achieving 7th place in both the 1976 and 1985 Eurovision Song Contest for Italy. The couple divorced in 1999. They have four children:

• Ylenia Maria (b. 1970), who went missing in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1994
• Yari Marco (b. 1973), their only son
• Cristel Chiara (b. 1985), who appeared in the Italian Reality TV show La Fattoria (The Farm)
• Romina Iolanda (b. 1987), who appeared in the 2005 edition of Italian Reality TV show Isola dei Famosi (Italian version of Survivor) with her father.

In 2005 she was a judge in the Italian TV show Ballando con le Stelle ("Dancing with the Stars").

Between 2006 and 2007 Romina organized exhibitions of her paintings, mainly in Milan. At the same time she dedicated herself to directing her film "Upaya" (2006).

In spring 2007 Romina Power bought a house in Sedona, Arizona and decided to leave Italy forever and move to the United States. The glamorous interview in which she revealed her plans was published in an Italian magazine Diva e donna. According to Romina, she was perceived by the Italian public merely as a performer of Il ballo del qua-qua (a song for children, from her and Al Bano's album Felicità, 1982), and for her it was difficult to establish herself in Italy as a painter and writer. Furthermore, she was disturbed by intrusive attention of the local press that published multiple articles with speculations about her private life and disappearance of her daughter Ylenia.

Shortly after her relocation, in 2008, her mother Linda Christian was diagnosed with colon cancer, so she went to live in her mother's house in Palm Springs, where she remained for three years, until her mother's death on July 22, 2011. In a November 2009 interview to the italian tv she stated to have considered, at least for some time, a possible return to Italy. At present Romina Power is permanently living and working in the United States where she resides full time.

Romina is a polyglot who speaks five languages: English, Italian, Spanish, French and Dutch.