By Bonnie McGrath
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Though she wanted to be an actress, in order to please her parents Fanti went on to study languages in Rome and London. She landed a job with an Italian travel company and went around the world designing package tours. But in the late 80s she took six months off to try modeling in New York, and in 1991 she enrolled in an acting seminar in Los Angeles. Realizing she still wanted to act for a living, she quit her job, gave up her apartment in Rome, and moved to southern California, where she quickly found work in commercials and films.
Orgasmo, which was adapted by Estelle Parsons, was well received. A few months after it opened Fo won the Nobel Prize for literature. The next day Los Angeles’s Italian Cultural Institute called Fanti. In honor of Fo’s prize, they wanted her to do all the monologues in Orgasmo as a one-woman show.
She was particularly taken aback by Sun-Times reviewer Lucia Mauro, who took her to task for a publicity poster in which she was photographed in a Jane Russell-esque sexpot pose, showing lots of cleavage but wearing boxing gloves as well. “The poster is ironic,” she explains. “It’s a feminist show. Every single person who comes to the show understands the poster; the show is against the exploitation of women. Hell-o-o!”
