Clara Calamai (1909-1998) was an Italian actress, one of the most celebrated divas of Italian cinema in the 1930s and 1940s. She rose to great fame with Alessandro Blasetti's *La cena delle beffe* (1942), a film that caused a scandal for a famous scene in which she appeared bare-breasted, considered to be the first in Italian sound cinema. Her career reached its peak the following year with the role of Giovanna in Luchino Visconti's masterpiece *Ossessione* (1943), a foundational work that anticipated Neorealism. For her intense performance in Duilio Coletti's *L'adultera* (1946), she won the inaugural Nastro d'Argento for Best Actress. After a long absence from the screen, she made a memorable return in Dario Argento's film *Profondo rosso* (1975). Her filmography attests to her ability to embody both the diva of "white telephone" cinema and the anti-heroine of realist drama.