I could play Arab roles, even German roles, Italian roles because I had that look.
The Italian gangster thing has become a form of the modern-day Western
The basic Roman ruin design is a pile of rocks with a little plaque saying "Roman Ruins" and a group of tourists frowning at it and wishing they were back at the hotel bar.
This is a choice I made 26 years ago when I joined the magazine. Vogue was in Italian but I wanted to speak to everyone so I thought of creating images that were made to talk.
[Italian men] are like show poodles. Sometimes they look so good I want to applaud.
The early bird catches the worm.
I love places that have an incredible history. I love the Italian way of life. I love the food. I love the people. I love the attitudes of Italians.
I speak African. I can even speak Italian.
In the Italian kitchen, ingredients are not treated as promising but untutored elements that need to be corrected through long and intricate manipulation and refined by the ultimate polish of a sauce.
I hate the opera. I think I must have a tin ear. No matter how hard I concentrate it still sounds like a bunch of Italian chefs screaming risotto recipes at each other.
[Rhyme is] but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meter;. . . Not without cause therefore some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rhyme,. . . as have also long since our best English tragedies, as. . . trivial and of no true musical delight; which [truly] consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoided by the learned ancients both in poetry and all good oratory.
I remember that even my first impression of Italian cinema was pictures by paparazzi because my mom was reading all of these trash magazines with paparazzo pictures.
I was gearing up for it. I took some singing lessons. And I opened my mouth, and Atom promptly said, 'That's not going to happen. We love your voice, but maybe we could use some of your English wit. ' He had doubts about it from way back. For starters, we weren't going to be doing the Italian-American crooning thing.
We thought the church had withdrawn from interfering in Italian politics. . . but instead there is a terrible resurgence. These are ugly signs for freedom of expression.
There are terrible living conditions and unhappiness, (even) where everybody is Italian.
Working with Dario [Argento] was a lot of fun. He's a larger-than-life character, and with an Italian accent.
In the early 1990s, I briefly got involved in Italian politics. But that intermezzo lasted just two years and had little success. I also found politics emotionally empty.
Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go.
I lived right on the borderline of a black neighborhood. So I could go into the black area and then there'd be these ghetto theaters that you could actually see the new kung fu movie or the new blaxploitation movie or the new horror film or whatever. And then there was also, if you went just a little further away, there was actually a little art house cinema. So I could actually see, you know, French movies or Italian movies, when they came out.
I'm a big pasta fan. I'm a big Italian food fan. Anything Italian - I love cheese, mozzarella. Mozzarella is my favorite, so I have to say anything Italian, I'll take it.