Valeria Golino is an Italian-Greek film and television actress. She was born in Naples, Italy to an Italian father who was a Germanist and scholar and a Greek mother who was a painter. She grew up in an "artistic household" and was raised between Athens and Naples. She started work as a model in Athens and then dropped out of high school after her first movie, having been discovered by the movie's director, Lina Wertmuller.

Golino obtained her first starring role in 1985's Little Fires and won the Best Actress Award at the Venice Film Festival for Storia d'amore in 1986. She began to work in Hollywood in 1988 with the movie Big Top Pee-wee and received roles in prominent films such as Rain Man, as the love interest of Tom Cruise, and the comedy films Hot Shots! and Hot Shots! Part Deux co-starring with Charlie Sheen She has won the David di Donatello, Silver Ribbon, and Coppa Volpi awards.

She had also been considered for the starring role in Pretty Woman, but the role went to Julia Robertsbecause Golino still had a prominent Italian accent.

More recently, she had a supporting role in the successful French thriller 36, Quai des Orfèvres.

Golino speaks Italian, English, French, and Greek. She was engaged to comedian actor Paul Reubens, aka Pee-wee Herman (1987 - 1988), to actor Benicio del Toro for 4 years (1988 – 1992), and to Italian sex-symbol Riccardo Scamarcio, since the spring of 2006.