Norma Aparecida Almeida Pinto Guimarães D´Áurea Bengell (born September 21, 1935 in Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...

), best known as Norma Bengell, is a Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

ian film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

 and television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 actress, singer, director

Film director

A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

, producer

Film producer

A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...

, and screenwriter

Screenwriter

Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...

.

Active in the film industry since 1959, Bengell has appeared in numerous international productions, including an extended period during the mid-1960s co-starring in Italian

Cinema of Italy

The history of Italian cinema began just a few months after the Lumière brothers had patented their Cinematographe, when Pope Leo XIII was filmed for a few seconds in the act of blessing the camera.-Early years:...

 productions, in which she was usually cast as the protagonist's romantic interest. She is possibly best known for starring with Barry Sullivan

Barry Sullivan (actor)

Barry Sullivan was an American movie actor who appeared in over 100 movies from the 1930s to the 1980s.Born in New York City, Sullivan fell into acting when in college playing semi-pro football...

 in Mario Bava

Mario Bava

Mario Bava was an Italian director, screenwriter, and cinematographer remembered as one of the greatest names from the "golden age" of Italian horror films.-Biography:Mario Bava was born in San Remo, Liguria, Italy...

's Planet of the Vampires

Planet of the Vampires

Planet of the Vampires is a 1965 Italian science fiction horror film directed by Mario Bava. The film stars Barry Sullivan and Norma Bengell. The screenplay, by Bava, Alberto Bevilacqua, Callisto Cosulich, Antonio Roman, and Rafael J. Salvia, was based on an Italian language science fiction...

(1965) and in Sergio Corbucci

Sergio Corbucci

Sergio Corbucci was an Italian film director. He is best known for his very violent yet intelligent spaghetti westerns...

's spaghetti western

Spaghetti Western

Spaghetti Western, also known as Italo-Western, is a nickname for a broad sub-genre of Western films that emerged in the mid-1960s in the wake of Sergio Leone's unique and much copied film-making style and international box-office success, so named by American critics because most were produced and...

 The Hellbenders

The Hellbenders

The Hellbenders is a Spaghetti Western directed by Sergio Corbucci in 1966.-Plot:...

(1967). She had a major role as a prostitute in Anselmo Duarte's Keeper of Promises (1962), a Brazilian drama that was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film

Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film

The Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film is one of the Academy Awards of Merit, popularly known as the Oscars, handed out annually by the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...

 in 1963 and won the Golden Palm at Cannes Film Festival

Cannes Film Festival

The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...

 in 1962. Earlier that same year, she caused major controversy after appearing fully nude in a scene of the Ruy Guerra

Ruy Guerra

Ruy Alexandre Guerra Coelho Pereira is a film director, screenwriter, film editor, and actor in Brazil. Guerra was born a Portuguese citizen in Lourenço Marques in Moçambique, when it was still a colony of Portugal....

 film Os Cafajestes. For that, she is regarded as the first mainstream actress of her country to appear fully naked on film.

On 1996 she directed her first film, an adaptation of José de Alencar

José de Alencar

José Martiniano de Alencar was a Brazilian lawyer, politician, orator, novelist and dramatist. He is one of the most famous writers of the first generation of Brazilian Romanticism, writing historical, regionalist and Indianist romances — being the most famous The Guarani...

's masterpiece The Guarani.

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