Best known on the screen for her roles in Accattone by Pier Paolo Pasolini (in which she played the role of the prostitute Amore) and Prima della rivoluzione by Bernardo Bertolucci.
Made her stage debut in 1951 in Plautus' Miles 'Gloriosus' with the Bolzano company. Achieved her first personal success with a part in Arthur Miller's The Crucible, directed by Luchino Visconti,.
A prolific stage actress, she has appeared in plays by Achard, Pirandello, Genet and Pinter. She has starred in George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan (1984) and Samuel Beckett's Happy Days (1985, 2010).