Eleonora Baldwin

Italian-American culinary connoisseur Eleonora Baldwin is a well-known TV personality to a lot of Italians, having established herself as a successful TV host, influencer and food and travel writer in Rome, but not many are aware that throughout the 1980s, 90s and 2000s, Eleonora was a prolific English language dubber, lending her eternally youthful voice to a long line of teenage and child characters in Italian films and cartoons. Fans of Italian 1980s horror movies, in particular, are almost guaranteed to have encountered Eleonora’s voice in various English versions of the films of Dario Argento, Lamberto Bava or Lucio Fulci. Just take a look at the clip below for some memorable examples of her voice acting work:

 

 

It was perhaps almost inevitable that Eleonora would end up working in the film industry, because cinema is truly in her blood. Her father was American film actor and television director Peter Baldwin, and her mother was Italian talent agent Emi De Sica, who was in turn the daughter of the legendary Italian filmmaker Vittorio De Sica and his first wife, stage and film actress Giuditta Rissone. Her parents met and fell in love when Peter Baldwin was in Rome acting in a number of Italian films in the 1960s, and they soon married and moved to the United States, where Eleonora was born on May 2, 1967. When she was just three years old, however, her parents separated, and Eleonora went with her mother to Rome, where she has been living ever since. Growing up in Italy, she kept in touch with the English language through her father, with whom she spent her summers, and by attending the international Overseas School or Rome, and thus grew up as a natural bilingual.

 

Eleonora's parents: actor Peter Baldwin (1931-2017), remembered for his work on such Italian films as Love in Rome (1961), The Ghost (1963) and The Possessed (1965), and agent Emi De Sica (1938-2021), who ran her own talent agency and whose clients included prolific 1970s Rome dubber Michael Forest.

 

In spite her family’s deep cinematic roots, Eleonora herself harbored no ambitions of pursuing a career in the film industry, and instead saw herself going into graphic design or art history. But then, however, she ended up falling in with Rome’s English language dubbing crowd when she was no more than 16-17 years old. Two of her school friends had learned of an English dubbing audition for teenage voices and decided to try out, and asked Eleonora if she wanted to join them. She did, and her light and very young-sounding voice turned out to fit the bill perfectly, which lead to Eleonora being cast in Cindy – Cinderella ’80 (1984), a highly popular modern day teenage romance version the Cinderella fairytale starring singer-actors Bonnie Bianco and Pierre Cosso. Eleonora was chosen to provide the voice of the titular heroine’s shallow teenage half-sister (played on-screen by Edi Angelillo), which was a relatively small part, but many others would soon follow, and over the next 20-something years, Eleonora would go on to become a frequent presence in the Roman dubbing salas, voice countless young characters for such major dubbing directors as Nick Alexander, Frank von Kuegelgen, Gene Luotto, Lewis Ciannelli and Ted Rusoff.

The mid-1980s was a something of a glory period for Italian horror films, with directors like Dario Argento and Lamberto Bava churning out a series of gory hits. As a lot of the characters in these films were teenage girls, Eleonora ended up dubbing a lot of them, and she can be heard screaming her way through pretty much every single Lamberto Bava film from that era. Which you might think would prove a challenge for Eleonora, who by her own admission is terrified of horror films, but she actually had a lot of fun working on these films. “Well, it was scary the first time, but we would never see the whole thing,” Eleonora explained when I chatted with her in September 2026. “We only saw the loops in which the character we were dubbing appeared in, so we only worked on that little fragment, which would be played again and again until we got the sync down. So, sometimes, when taken out of context like that, it wasn’t very scary. It was just: ‘Now you’ll scream. Don’t even look at the screen, just scream!’”

 

Eleonora's many scream-filled horror movie dubbing assignments include providing the voice for Federica Mastroianni in Phenomena (1985)...

...Fiore Argento in Demons (1985)...

...Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni in Demons 2 (1986)...

...and Lara Wendel in You'll Die at Midnight (1986).

 

Eleonora was also a regular fixture in the various Karate Warrior movies that were being churned out by producer/director Fabrizio De Angelis during the late 1980s and early 1990s, and she can be heard in many of these films as the voice of Julie, the younger sister of the franchise’s lead character Larry Jones (played by Ron Williams).

 

The Karate Warrior movies were all shot on location in Miami with local talent, who all ended up having their voices dubbed in post. Eleonora provides the voice of Julie (played on screen by Katy Johnson) in parts 3, 4 and 5.

 

Due to the lightness of her voice, Eleonora even dubbed a lot of child roles, providing the voices of not just little girls and even little boys as well. She was also very active in cartoon dubbing, and would often cover a variety of different characters on animated projects. Take a look at this video for some more examples of her various dubbing work:

 

 

Even well into adulthood, Eleonora would continue to dub younger characters, but throughout the years, her voice gradually matured, and this eventually opened up the door for her to dub for other types of roles, such as leading ladies. A prominent example of this is the bold and free-spirited title character of Tinto Brass’ comedy-erotic film Frivolous Lola (1998), who Eleonora dubs with a perfect mixture of sensuality and cheekiness. It’s actually oddly fitting that it’s she who ended up dubbing the role of Lola, because Lola happens to be what Eleonora’s little sister Giovanna called her as a toddler since Eleonora was too difficult to pronounce, and the nickname has stuck with her over the years.

 

Anna Ammirati as the title character in Frivolous Lola.

 

  

This video features a little scene of Eleonora acting as the voice of Frivolous Lola:

 

 

Around the same time, Eleonora was to embark on a new career. She was starting to feel the urge to work on a movie set, albeit not as an actress. Instead, she ended up becoming a script supervisor. A job that meant she was in charge of overseeing the continuity of a film by monitoring and recording details across shots and takes – including dialogue, physical actions, eye-lines, wardrobe, hair, makeup, prop placement – to ensure that scenes can be edited together seamlessly.

Eleonora worked as a script supervisor for about 15 years, and throughout those years, she not only worked on a long line of Italian films and television series, but also on several big Hollywood productions shot in Italy, such as Gangs of New York (2002), The Passion of the Christ (2004), Casanova (2005), Miracle at St. Anna (2008) and The American (2010). And, in a certain sense, it was Eleonora’s work in the dubbing sala that led to her becoming a script supervisor.

“I think the sala was the gateway to me wanting to be on set,” Eleonora reflected when I chatted with her. “I think that’s what sparked it, because I was already behind the scenes by bringing some of these odd characters to American screens. It was fun, and it was a machine that I felt comfortable in, because I started so early and I was lucky enough to be working with such great dubbing directors and amazing colleagues who taught me everything! Somehow, that must have worked its way into my brain to say: ‘Why don’t you go see how it’s done from the beginning?’”

 

Eleonora as script supervisor on the set of Spike Lee's Miracle at St. Anna (2008). Picture originally posted here.

 

Throughout her script supervisor days, Eleonora also continued to work with dubbing, even if not with the same regularity. One of the last big dubbing projects she worked on was Sergei Bondarchuk’s epic historical drama Quiet Flows the Don, which was shot in the early 1990s, but due to financial and legal disputes it was not completed and released until in 2006. Eleonora dubbed the voice of the female lead, played by French actress Delphine Forest, and recorded her part while she was heavily pregnant with her son, Elliot.

She continued to work as a script supervisor for a few more years, but wanting to spend more time with her young son, she left the cinema world behind and began to instead concentrate on a long-time passion which was cultivated through her mother and grandmother: food. In 2009, Eleonora launched the highly popular food and travel blog Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino, and has since gone on to establish herself as a highly successful culinary entrepreneur whose writings are frequently featured in international food and travel publications. She is also a prominent TV personality on the Gambero Rosso Channel, Italy’s premier food network, where she has created and hosted a number of series, such as the popular ABCheese.

 

Eleonora scouring the food markets for tasty treats.

 

Eleonora from an episode of her TV show ABCheese.

 

Even though Eleonora no longer does any voice acting, she does from time to time get called on to do voice overs for commercials, and has nothing but great memories of the years she spent in the Roman dubbing studios. I had the privilege of chatting with Eleonora for a couple of hours about her dubbing days, and my full interview with her will be published here shortly. In the meantime, make sure you also check out Eleonora’s dubbing filmography below. As always, these filmographies are works in progress and will be continuously updated.

 

 

English dubbing filmography

 

- Cindy – Cinderella ’80 (1984) - voice of Carol Cardone (Edi Angelillo)

- Monster Shark (1984) - voice of Sandra Hayes (Iris Peynado)

- Murder-Rock – Dancing Death (1984) - voice of Gloria Weston (Belinda Busato)

- Demons (1985) - voice of Hannah (Fiore Argento)

- Phenomena (1985) - voice of Sophie (Federica Mastroianni)

- Demons 2 (1986) - voice of Sally (Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni)

- Let’s Hope it’s a Girl (1986) - voice of Malvina (Lucrezia Lante della Rovere)

- You’ll Die at Midnight (1986) - voice of Carol Terzi (Lara Wendel)

- Graveyard Disturbance (1987) - voice of Micky (Beatrice Ring)

- Dinner with a Vampire (1988) - voice of Monica (Yvonne Sciò)

- The Ogre (1988) - voice of Maria (Stefania Montorsi)

- Stradivari (1988) - voice of Caterina (Fanny Bastien)

- Karate Rock (1990) - voice of Connie Parks (Dorian D. Field)

- Husbands and Lovers (1991) - voice of Sara (Veronica Del Chiappa)

- Karate Warrior 3 (1991) - voice of Julie Jones (Katy Johnson)

- Karate Warrior 4 (1992) - voice of Julie Jones (Katy Johnson)

- Karate Warrior 5 (1992) - voice of Julie Jones (Katy Johnson)

- The Cave of the Golden Rose 3 (1993) (TV mini-series) - voice of Bolt (Lenka Kubálková)

- Dellamorte Dellamore (1994) - voice of Claudio’s Girlfriend (Katja Anton)

- First Action Hero (1994) - voice of Paloma (Alessandra Bellini)

- The Fishmen and Their Queen (1995) - voice of Selva (Natascia Castrignano)

- Fatal Frames (1996) - voice of Rebecca (Veronika Logan)

- Frivolous Lola (1998) - voice of Lola (Anna Ammirati)

- Quiet Flows the Don (2006) - voice of Aksinia (Delphine Forest)

 

A big thanks to Eleonora, who remembered the names of several of the films she dubbed and even some of the actresses, and who very generously listened through some clips to confirm they were of her voice. Without her help, it’s doubtful I would ever have been able to put a name and face to that mysterious teenage voice I recognized from so many 1980s horror films.