Valeria Golino (Greek: Βαλέρια Γκολίνο; born October 22, 1966) is an Italian-Greek film and television actress. She is perhaps best known to U.S. audiences for the Academy Award-winning film Rain Man, and has won the David di Donatello, Silver Ribbon, and Coppa Volpi awards.
Golino was born in Naples, Italy to an Italian father who was a Germanist and scholar and a Greek mother who was a painter; one of her grandmothers was Egyptian-French. She grew up in an "artistic household" and was raised between Athens and Naples. Golino is the niece of L'Espresso journalist Enzo Golino; her brother is a musician. She started work as a model in Athens and then dropped out of high school after her first movie, after having been discovered by the movie's director, Lina Wertmuller.
Golino obtained her first starring role in 1985's Little Fires and won the Best Actress Award at the Venice Film Festival for Storia d'amore in 1986. She began to work in Hollywood in 1988 with the movie Big Top Pee-wee and received roles in prominent films such as Rain Man, as the love interest of Tom Cruise, and the comedy films Hot Shots! and Hot Shots! Part Deux co-starring with Charlie Sheen. She had also been considered for the starring role in Pretty Woman, but the role went to Julia Roberts because Golino still had a prominent Italian accent.
More recently, she had a supporting role in the successful French thriller 36, Quai des Orfèvres.
Golino speaks Italian, English, French, and Greek. She was engaged to comedian actor Paul Reubens, aka Pee-wee Herman (1987 - 1988), to actor Benicio del Toro for 4 years (1988 - 1992; they lived together in Golino's LA apartment), and to Italian sex-symbol Riccardo Scamarcio, since the spring of 2006.
