Lory Del Santo was born in Povegliano Veronese, near Verona, into an indigent family. She is the eldest daughter of then 22-year-old Antonio Dal Santo and Clorinda. Because of low temperatures and other factors, Del Santo was born in a stable. When she was three, her father died in a car accident. She grew up with her mother and her sister, three years younger. They lived in the countryside and then moved to Verona.
Biography
Del Santo started her TV career at sixteen as a in the 1975 edition of Festivalbar, the first edition that took place at the Verona Arena, which became the permanent venue for the final evening of the music festival and for the most important live concerts. After graduating from high school she left Verona for Rome and Milan alone, without her mother's consent, to attempt a career in film and fashion. She worked as a model, fashion photographer, and entrepreneur and studied acting. In the late 1970s she obtained her first film roles, mainly in sexy comedy films. She took part in 20 films over 6 years, and was directed, among others, by Dino Risi, Adriano Celentano, and Massimo Troisi. In 1980 she entered the Miss Universe competition. In the early-1980s Del Santo became popular thanks to her participation in successful TV shows such as Renzo Arbore's Tagli, ritagli e frattaglie and Antonio Ricci's Drive In. In the second half of the 1980s, she set aside her career in the entertainment industry to devote herself to her private life. However, in 1989 and 1990 she went on tour as the protagonist for a theatrical show alongside Walter Chiari. In the Autumn of 1991 she was hired for another theater tour, but gave up for personal reasons. Del Santo was a focus of gossip columns, in UK mainly for her relationship with Eric Clapton and for the death of their son, Conor Loren. While he was still married to Pattie Boyd, Clapton fathered Conor, who was born on 21 August 1986. Conor died on 20 March 1991, at the age of four, when he fell out of an open 'window' on the 53rd floor of a Manhattan apartment building, the 'Galeria'. The death of their son was the inspiration for Clapton's songs, "Tears in Heaven", "Circus" and "My father's eyes". After a long absence, she returned to television in 2005 by participating in the third season of L'isola dei famosi. During this show, she received such high approval from the public that it aroused the interest of even the hardest detractors of this television genre; in the last episode she triumphed with 75% of the votes, officially marking her return to TV. In the following years she took part in others Italian reality shows, TV shows, and radio broadcasts. In 2006 a publishing house asked her to write an autobiography, but she doesn't appreciate biographies and autobiographies, so she found a compromise and wrote a book that she calls an "autobiography of my thoughts", with the title Piacere è una sfida. The Italian singer Zucchero wrote in his autobiography about how Lory Del Santo had the idea to introduce him to Clapton, inviting the Italian singer for dinner with the couple. From this meeting, an artistic collaboration and a long friendship between the two musicians was born.
Personal life
In her book, Del Santo states to have had an affair with George Harrison in December 1991 in Hiroshima, shortly after the death of her son—in part due to Clapton’s effectively “freezing” her out of his life thereafter, and also as revenge on the well-documented history between Clapton, Harrison, and Pattie Boyd. She has had other children, Devin and Loren, whom she raised alone as a single mother. She has never married.
