Italian beauty and star of a string of 1970s and 1980s softcore erotic movies Lilli Carati is someone few fans would probably ever have dreamed would have made the step in to hardcore porn. That she did, making no less than five X-rated full-blown hardcore movies near the end of her acting career in the late 1980s, puts her in that rare collector's category of mainstream actresses who have done hardcore.

She was born in Varese, Lombardy, Italy, on 23 September 1956. Dark, lithe and stunningly sensual from an early age, Lilli Carati won the title of 'Miss Elegance' at a beauty contest in Calabria when aged just 18. The exposure soon saw her whipped off to Italian fashion capital Milan to work as a model. A year later, she was runner-up in the first ever Miss Italia contest and Italian film directors came calling. With her sultry looks and wicked glint in her eye, Lilli was perfect material for a string of sex comedies and later classic Euro exploitation movies. She would often take the parts of the more privileged, hedonistic characters and could seem to master a range of ages.

The first movie which saw her take the lead La Professoressa Di Scienze Naturali aka School Days, made in 1976, saw her play a substitute teacher who seduces one of her pupils. Whereas just a year later, she starred in La Compagna Di Banco, in which she played a rich schoolgirl. That Lilli could act as well as look good helped greatly. Her most famous exploitation movie is probably Escape From Women's Prison aka Le Evase, made in 1978. But those which are still probably played the most on late night cable TV are the erotic classics she made after meeting Euro-sleaze director Joe D'Amato in 1984. By far the best of those is the sumptuously shot L'alcova aka The Alcove, where Lilli is the rich mistress of a 1940s country house, involved in various raunchy affairs with her secretary and an african slave girl called Zerbal, played by softcore legend Laura Gemser.

Since D'Amato is also known for making hardcore flicks, it's a surprise that none of the hardcore movies she made were directed by him. The Italian X-rated titles she shot, like Una Moglie Molto Infedele and Pelle Contro Pelle, all came from Giorgio Grand and saw her do the deed with Euro studs like Rocco Siffredi and Roberto Malone. The last hardcore movie starring Lilli, before she quit acting altogether, was the 1989 flick The Whore, an elaborately scripted classic from directors Alex de Renzy and Henri Pachard. It's still a shock anyone persuaded her to shoot hardcore!