Asia Argento's Real Name: Aria Maria Vittoria Rossa Argento

Quick answer: Asia Argento's registered name is Aria Maria Vittoria Rossa Argento. Rolling Stone Italia and ComingSoon.it both give it, and the Library of Congress agrees she was born September 20, 1975, in Rome. Her parents wanted to call her Asia, but she says rules at the time barred naming a child after a foreign continent, so the registry recorded Aria. She is the daughter of horror director Dario Argento and actress Daria Nicolodi (Rolling Stone Italia; LOC).

Real name and early life

Rolling Stone Italia says she was registered as Aria because of a 1970s rule against geographic names, and that she has always been called Asia. In an interview reported by Gossip.it, Argento traced the rule to the Mussolini era. She said her father improvised at the registry office: "Dario, Daria... Aria!" She added that nobody has ever called her Aria.

Her mother, Daria Nicolodi, died in 2020, according to Rolling Stone Italia. As a child she appeared in two horror films written and produced by her father, Demons 2 (1986) and The Church (1989).

Career highlights

Argento won best actress at the David di Donatello Awards, Italy's top film honors, for Carlo Verdone's Perdiamoci di vista (1994) and again for Compagna di viaggio. She played Charlotte de Sauve in Patrice Chéreau's Queen Margot (1994) and starred in several of her father's films, including Trauma and The Stendhal Syndrome. Her international credits include Abel Ferrara's New Rose Hotel, Rob Cohen's xXx (2002) with Vin Diesel, Gus Van Sant's Last Days and George A. Romero's Land of the Dead (both 2005), and Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette (2006).

She began directing at 19. Her features include Scarlet Diva (2000) and The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (2004), with Winona Ryder. She has also released music, including the 2013 album Total Entropy.

In 2017 she publicly alleged that Harvey Weinstein assaulted her in a Cannes hotel in 1997, a claim he denied, as he denied all accusations of non-consensual sex. In 2018, The New York Times reported that actor Jimmy Bennett alleged she sexually assaulted him in 2013, when he was 17. Argento denied it, telling the Guardian she never had a sexual relationship with Bennett and that her late partner Anthony Bourdain made the settlement payment.

She has a daughter, Anna Lou, with singer Morgan and a son, Nicola, with director Michele Civetta.

Name notes for searchers

Aria is her legal first name, and Maria, Vittoria, and Rossa are additional given names. Asia is the name her parents chose and the one she uses everywhere outside official documents. Argento is her father's surname.