Sydne Rome

Sydne Rome is an American-Italian film actress born on March 17, 1946. With one notable exception, she has worked almost exclusively in Europe throughout her entertainment career. She became a well-known screen performer across Italian, German, and broader European cinema and television, frequently playing young, seemingly innocent American women abroad. In addition to her acting work, she gained public prominence during the 1980s as an aerobics icon and recording artist.

Born in Akron, Rome was raised in a Jewish family in Upper Sandusky, Ohio. Her father was the president of a plastics corporation in the Akron area, and her younger sister was Julia Lyndon. After completing high school in Akron, Rome attended Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh to study acting.

Rome expanded her acting skills through an apprenticeship with the Pasadena Playhouse in California. This training caught the attention of an agent, leading to an audition in 1968 for the title role in Candy, which proved unsuccessful. After working another year at the Playhouse, she made her feature film debut in the 1969 British spy comedy Some Girls Do. She then began working predominantly in Italian cinema, appearing in Spaghetti Westerns and various other film genres before extending her career into German films and television.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Rome appeared in numerous notable feature films, including Roman Polanski's What?, Otto Schenk's Merry-Go-Round, Pierre Granier-Deferre's Creezy, Claude Chabrol's The Twist, David Hemmings' Just a Gigolo, and Sergei Bondarchuk's Red Bells and Red Bells II. Since the late 1990s, she has focused extensively on Italian television films and series, appearing in productions such as Padre Pio: Between Heaven and Earth, Lourdes, Saint Rita, and Callas e Onassis. Her later feature film appearances include Pupi Avati's The Youngest Son and Il cuore grande delle ragazze, as well as Roman Polanski's 2023 film The Palace.

At the beginning of the 1980s, Rome established herself as a central figure in the aerobics craze. She produced workout videos and released an album titled Aerobic Fitness Dancing, which was produced by Frank Farian and recorded in Italian, German, and Spanish. As a vocalist, she recorded the single "Angelo prepotente" in Italian, English (as "For You"), and German (as "Wozu"), and recorded a cover version of Marty Balin's hit "Hearts".

Rome married Emilio Lari in 1973, converted to Catholicism, and later divorced before marrying gerontologist Roberto Bernabei, with whom she has two grown children. She has lived in Rome since the early 1970s. In 2009, her face was disfigured when her car's air bag exploded in an accident. She has remained active in European film and television.