Moana Pozzi - Early Years

Early Years

Pozzi was born Anna Moana Rosa Pozzi in Genoa, Liguria. Her parents chose her name from a geographic map of Hawaii: it means "where the sea is deepest". Her father Alfredo Pozzi was a nuclear engineer and he moved around the world with his family for work, and her mother Giovannina Alloisio was a housewife. As a teen, Moana lived with her family in Canada, then in Brazil. At 13 years old, in 1974, Moana moved back to Italy with her family, where she finished high school. When the family had to move again to Lyon, France, she decided to start living independently in Rome around 1980, when she was 19 years old.

In Rome, Pozzi started working as a model and studied acting. Sometimes she performed in TV commercials or as a walk-on in comedy movies. She was very ambitious, and in Rome she became the lover of many famous people. Her most famous secret lover was Bettino Craxi, Prime Minister of Italy from 1983 to 1987. Through his intervention, she got a job at Rai Television on a children's entertainment program. The same year (1981) she performed her first hardcore movie, Valentina, ragazza in calore (Valentina, Girl in Heat), credited as Linda Heveret. A minor scandal ensued since, at the same time the movie was in theatres, she was still working on children's TV. She denied being the same person, but she was suspended from TV anyway. This gave her her first popularity in newspapers and magazines. In 1985 Federico Fellini wanted her to perform in his movie Ginger and Fred.