Edwige Fenech

Born on Christmas Eve in 1948, stunning French actress and sex symbol Edwige Fenech has appeared in dozens of films and produced several features throughout her lengthy career in international cinema. After winning a beauty contest at the age of 16, she began to appear on screen, first in the 1967 comedy "All Mad About Him" and soon in a flurry of West German sex comedies. In the late 1960s, she began to work with Austrian director Franz Antel on films like "Sexy Susan Sins Again" and the comedy of intrigue "Frau Wirtin hat auch eine Nichte." At the height of her career in the 1970s, she was landing multiple leads, notably in Giuliano Carnimeo's horror thriller "The Case of the Bloody Iris" and the 1973 sexy mob movie " Secrets of a Call Girl." She worked on films across Europe, and by the 1980s, Fenech became a television personality, appearing alongside the gorgeous German-American actress Barbara Bouchet. Fenech eventually started her own production company, Immagine e Cinema S.r.l., with her son Edwin. One of the company's most notable productions was the 2004 version of "The Merchant of Venice" starring Al Pacino. By 1995, Fenech had largely disappeared from the screen, occasionally popping up in a TV movie, until a notable return in 2007 when Quentin Tarantino convinced her to take a role in Eli Roth's "Hostel: Part II."