Alessandra Mussolini
Alessandra Mussolini (born 30 December 1962) is an Italian former politician, the granddaughter of Benito Mussolini, and a former actress and model who served as a Member of the European Parliament for Forza Italia. She was a member of the Chamber of Deputies from 2008 to 2013 and the Italian Senate from 2013 to 2014, she was elected under The People of Freedom which is now part of Forza Italia. She was elected to the European Parliament in 2014. She was the founder and leader of the national conservative political party Social Action; from 2004 until 2008, Mussolini  also served as a Member of the European Parliament, and she has been a member of the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Italian Parliament, for The People of Freedom. Personal life. Alessandra Mussolini was born in Rome, the daughter of Romano Mussolini, the fourth son of Benito Mussolini, fascist dictator of Italy from 1922 to 1943, and Anna Maria Villani Scicolone (born 11 May 1938, Rome). Actress Sophia Loren is her maternal aunt. From 1976 to 1980 she went to high school at the American Overseas School of Rome. She graduated in 1994 from Sapienza University of  Rome, where she got her Master of Science in medicine and surgery. She married customs policeman Mauro Floriani on 28 October 1989. Contrary to tradition, she proposed to him. Together they have three children, Caterina, Clarissa, and Romano — the last named after his grandfather. Later, the children adopted their mother's surname, but she went through a complex legal process to allow them to do so. She has since campaigned for Italian law to be changed to allow all children to take their mother's last name if they wish. Her husband was one of the accused scheduled to appear  in court for a child prostitution trial in 2015. In 2013, around 50 men—among them professionals, priests, and politicians—were accused of paying two teenage girls, aged 14 and 15, for sexual services in Rome. She is first cousin once-removed to Caio Giulio Cesare Mussolini, Benito Mussolini's great-grandson, who ran for the Fratelli d’Italia party in the 2019 European Parliament election. She considers herself Roman Catholic, although she does not attend Masses regularly. Entertainment career. Mussolini was taken under the wing of her aunt Sophia Loren for a while and started a career as an actress  in the Italian film industry during the 1970s. "A Special Day" (1977), in which she had a minor role as "Maria Luisa," won an American Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. During 1982, Mussolini released a pop music album of romantic songs under the title "Amore" on Alfa Records; the album was released only in Japan and has since become something of a collectors item. Mussolini also appeared as a glamour model, including on the cover of two European editions of "Playboy", in Italy (August 1983 ) and Germany (November 1983). "When you are an actress, you are dealing with the body. Every actress does topless and stuff like this; you have to," she has said. Mussolini continued as an actress into the 1980s. Some of the films she featured in were made for Italian television. However, she still acted in standard cinematic films, such as "The Assisi Underground" in which she played a nun; the movie focused on the Roman Catholic Church rescuing Italian Jews from the Nazis in 1943. She starred in her final film in 1990 and then left the film industry to continue  studying after a producer asked her to change her name. Political career. In 1992, she was elected to parliament in a Naples constituency as a member of the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI). She later was a candidate for the post of mayor of Naples, but was defeated by Antonio Bassolino. She claimed that her relations with Gianfranco Fini, leader of the Alleanza Nazionale, never were very good; she then later withdrew, resigning over differences with him at least once. She unsuccessfully challenged him for the leadership of the party when he withdrew support for Mussolini in a television interview in  January 2002. In 2001, Mussolini was involved in a physical altercation while filming for a Porta a Porta talk show episode on sexual harassment. Mussolini attacked and kicked Katia Bellillo, then Minister for Equal Opportunities, while calling her an "ugly communist" who should "go and live in Cuba." Mussolini suddenly left the National Alliance on 28 November 2003, following the visit of party leader and the Deputy Prime Minister Gianfranco Fini to Israel, where he described fascism as part "the absolute evil" with regard to the Holocaust as he apologised for Italy's role as an Axis Power during the  Second World War. Mussolini, however, defended the right of Israel to exist and declared that the world "should beg forgiveness of Israel." Following her resignation, Mussolini formed her Social Action party, originally named "Freedom of Action," and organised a coalition named Social Alternative. The move was read in the Italian media as surprising because of Mussolini's "progressive" stances on many issues, including abortion, artificial insemination, gay rights and civil unions. She has been an outspoken feminist and has been described by conservative commentators as a "socialist" and a "left-winger." In the 2004 European Parliament election, Social Alternative, gained  1.2% of the electoral list vote. Mussolini herself received 133,000 preference votes. In response to a comment made by UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom in which he said that "No self-respecting small businessman with a brain in the right place would ever employ a lady of child-bearing age. That isn't politically correct, is it, but it's a fact of life. The more women's rights you have, it's actually a bar to their employment." and: "I just don't think [women] clean behind the fridge enough," Mussolini responded by saying In March 2005, Mussolini was banned  by a local court from regional elections held the following month for presenting fraudulent signatures. "This is an affront to democracy, if they're going to exclude the Social Alternative they will have to exclude all the parties, because all the signature lists are false," Mussolini told Reuters. Mussolini went on a hunger strike to protest the decision. However, at the end of the month Italy's top administrative court, the Council of State, annulled the decision and she stood for election. In 2006, she responded to claims by the transgender Italian parliamentary candidate Vladimir Luxuria that she was a  fascist by saying that it would be better to be a fascist than it would be to be gay. In November 2007, remarks by Mussolini triggered the collapse of the far-right Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty grouping within the European Parliament. Mussolini declared that all Romanians were criminals in remarks regarding immigration policy. This prompted delegates from the Greater Romania Party to quit the group, bringing the group below the minimum number of members to qualify as a caucus and receive Parliamentary funding. After the Italian general elections of April 2008, Mussolini served as a member of the Italian parliament within  Silvio Berlusconi's alliance of right wing parties, The People of Freedom. Mussolini condemned the Vatican's comparison of homosexuality with pedophilia, stating "You can't link sexual orientation to pedophilia … this link risks becoming dangerously misleading for the protection of children." In the Italian general election of February 2013, she was elected to the Senate of the Republic as a member of The People of Freedom. The party was transformed into a new Forza Italia in November 2013. In the 2014 European Parliament election, Mussolini was elected to the EP for Forza Italia. She left Forza Italia in 2018 , following the party's decision to be in opposition to the Conte government. She has used Twitter to defend the memory of her grandfather from critics such as actor Jim Carrey, and fans of Scottish football club Celtic F.C. In 2019, she lost her bid for reelection to the European Parliament. In December 2020, she left politics.