Exploring Asia

Italian actress Asia Argento, 26, agreed to tell us a little bit about herself the other day -- if you don't know, she is co-starring with the newly estimable Vin Diesel in the action-packed thriller XXX -- and by the end of the telling, wild dogs had to drag us away. It's the way she came at us, in stiletto heels, a strap-fallen tank top, jeans, a crescent moon of pale belly showing, her voice sleepy, flat, direct, resting on us like humidity, nearly post-coital.

This took place in Los Angeles, in her hotel. Her hair was in shambles, her lips glossy red. She was sitting at a table, drawing the life out of a Camel Light and talking about Vin Diesel.

"I had many, many dreams about him," she said, "never sexy dreams but sort of magical dreams, dreamy dreams, symbolic dreams. Once I saw his soul, I was in awe of him. I don't think I'm Vin's type. I don't know what Vin's type is. But he is a wonderful person. He is the king.''

Then, exhaling a cloud of smoke, she turned toward her terrace and pointed out a red apple resting there.

It was not her apple. She had no earthly idea where the apple came from. "Somebody threw me that apple, I think, from down below,'' she said. And then she paused for a while before going on.

Here, Argento is not so well-known, having previously appeared in only a few U.S. films, most notably the 1998 Abel Ferrara derangement New Rose Hotel, co-starring Willem Dafoe and Christopher Walken. But in Italy, where she is already a huge star, Argento is widely regarded as a kind of disturbing national treasure and curiosity. Her father is the infamous Italian soft-core-horror-movie director Dario Argento (Suspiria, Deep Red), and from a rather innocent age she has appeared in his movies, often in highly provocative, sexually fucked-up situations.

In addition, her talents are thought to be alarmingly broad: She writes novels and short stories, paints, sings in bands, directs movies and documentaries, wins Italian versions of the Oscar, embraces full-frontal nudity in print and onscreen, and can speculate with more than coffeehouse intelligence on excess, God and redemption. As well, in an age of tattooed actresses, she is more flamboyantly tattooed than most, with a sun and two snakes on her tailbone, an eye on her shoulder, a large winged angel ascending from her pubic thatch (placed there "not for some sexual iconography of a flying pussy but more to hide it from my father") and, across her third rib, the name of her late sister, Anna, who died in a motor-scooter accident. Also, until the recent birth of a daughter, Anna Lou, Argento publicly chose to live her life almost entirely in darkness and shadow, suffering (or, rather, enjoying) deep depressions, terrible thoughts and visions of herself as a circus freak she called the She Freak.

Argento is, then, quite something and God only knows what else; but we thought we'd try to find out, since she seemed more than willing to go with us to any place we wanted to go.