'Rain Man' Actress Valeria Golino Resurfaces at Venice Film Festival

Valeria Golino at the Venice Film Festival on September 10 (Franco Origlia/Getty)

It’s been awhile since American audiences have seen Valeria Golino. The beautiful Italian actress appeared in several Hollywood hits between 1988 and 1995, including Rain Man, Hot Shots!, and Leaving Las Vegas. This week, Golino, 49, made a striking appearance at the Venice Film Festival, where she’s promoting her new Italian drama Per Amor Vostro. Check out the photo above.

Valeria Golino with Charlie Sheen in ‘Hot Shots! Part Deux’ (Everett)

Golino made her American film debut in 1988’s Big Top Pee-wee, but her breakout role came later that year, when she played Tom Cruise’s girlfriend in Rain Man (which won Best Picture at the 1989 Academy Awards). She went on to appear in the Top Gun parody Hot Shots! and its sequel Hot Shots! Part Deux playing Charlie Sheen’s love interest. She also costarred in Sean Penn’s 1991 drama The Indian Runner opposite Viggo Mortensen.

Valeria Golino and director Giuseppe Gaudino on Sept. 10 (Photo by Franco Origlia/Getty)

She was also one of two finalists for the lead role in Pretty Woman — which she lost, obviously, to Julia Roberts. “The fact that I am foreigner didn’t help,” she told an Australian site back in 2013. “It helped me get there because my accent was charming, but when it came to be between Julia Roberts and me, she was American.” As the ‘90s went on, Golino appeared in Leaving Las Vegas, Four Rooms, and Escape from L.A., but began to focus more on making European movies. In 2002, she had a small role in Frida and starred in the international hit Respiro. But in the past decade, American audiences have seen little of Golino.

Valeria Golino with Dustin Hoffman in ‘Rain Man’ (Everett)

However, the actress’ career has never slowed down overseas. She is a frequent star of Italian films, and made her directorial debut with the 2013 drama Honey (Miele), which won two Italian Golden Globes and received a commendation from the Ecumenical jury at the Cannes Film Festival. In Per Amor Vostro, which screens at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday, Golino plays a Naples woman who abandons her stifling home life and begins anew, inspired by the view of the sea from her balcony. “I came to Hollywood and I loved it. It was a great time, but in my head I was still elsewhere, in Europe,” Golino said to The Hollywood Reporter in 2014. “I believed in a certain cinema, which I still do believe in — a certain European cinema — and as a young woman being in America I thought I was being taken away from that.”

Watch the Italian ‘Per Amor Vostro’ trailer below: