While a physics major at Naples University, Sylva Koscina was chosen to award flowers to the winner of a bicycle race. Newspaper photos of the ceremony led to a screen test and to a role in Pietro Germi's The Rainbow Man. Sylva has since been a star in ascendancy, and in Federico Fellini's Juliet of the Spirits, her sensual side aroused international interest. This year, Sylva appears opposite David McCallum (in MGM's Three Bites of the Apple), Paul Newman, Horst Buchholz and Richard Johnson. In an exclusive Playboy portfolio, she intimately reveals the charisma that is Koscina.
"When I was a girl, I wondered what it would be like to be a star. Now I know--and it is more marvelous than I imagined. But it also means waking and working before dawn, and traveling too much: I have lived in hotels for the past five years. I am a woman without a home."
"To be beautiful is to walk into a room and have a man remember you for the rest of his life. I want to be beautiful and happy. I say to myself, 'Sylva, other girls are not so lucky as you,' and I know it to be the truth."
"Who is Sylva? Sylva is a mystery, a cocktail of life. Sylva is laughter, anger, sentimentality, bitchiness and passion--much passion. Sylva was born in Yugoslavia, came to Italy as a child and feels as if she is an international woman. I love being Sylva."
