Ilona Staller

Ilona Staller (born 1951) is a Hungarian-Italian pornographic actress and politician who became internationally known under the stage name Cicciolina. Born in Budapest, she worked as a model and air hostess in Hungary before moving to Italy in the early 1970s, where she took Italian citizenship and built a career in adult magazines, radio, and erotic film.

From the late 1970s she became a fixture of late-night Italian radio and television and made dozens of pornographic films, presenting a public persona of bare-breasted appearances and political slogans. In 1979 she helped found the Partito dell'Amore, the Party of Love, which campaigned on civil-libertarian themes including the legalisation of brothels, sex education in schools, and nuclear disarmament.

She was elected to the Italian Chamber of Deputies in 1987 as a Radical Party member for the Lazio constituency and served a single legislature, drawing wide press coverage for her speeches on prison conditions, human rights, and her offer to have intimate relations with Saddam Hussein in exchange for the release of Western hostages during the Gulf crisis.

From 1991 to 1994 she was married to the American artist Jeff Koons, and the works he produced from their relationship under the title Made in Heaven were among the most discussed exhibits of the early 1990s art world. Their custody dispute over their son Ludwig continued for many years. She has continued to stand for office in Italy and Hungary into the 2010s.

The given name Ilona is a Hungarian form of Helen, from the Greek Helene, traditionally connected with words for light or torch. Used for girls in Hungary and across Central Europe, it has accompanied her through a long and unconventional public life.