Milly Carlucci

Camilla Patrizia "Milly" Carlucci (born 1 October 1954) is an Italian television presenter, actress and singer. Carlucci played the role of Urania in the 1985 film The Adventures of Hercules. In 1996 she became a Goodwill ambassador for UNICEF. Since 2005 she has been the sole host of Ballando con le Stelle ("Dancing with the Stars"), the Italian version of Strictly Come Dancing. In 2009 she became the first woman to host the Miss Italia beauty pageant. She is considered one of the most important women in Italian television and she's a top presenter of Rai 1.

Biography

Born in Sulmona (AQ), she is the daughter of Luigi Carlucci, a general in the Italian Army, and Maria Caracciolo. She spent her childhood in Udine, before moving to Rome during her teenage years. While still a student at the Terenzio Mamiani State High School in Rome, she developed a Artistic roller skating and, with the Skating Folgore Roma team, won the Italian Championship in the club rankings.

In 1972, she won the Miss Teenager beauty contest, but her parents were not very supportive of young Milly's artistic aspirations, so they persuaded her to enroll in the Faculty (division) of Architecture. Milly will never feel suited to those studies, which she abandons without regret, having convinced her parents of her aspirations. She began her career at the television station GBR TV, where she appeared as a presenter alongside other very young debutantes such as Mimma Nocelli, Stefania Mecchia, and Viviana Antonini, all of whom later ended up at Rai or Mediaset with varying degrees of success.