SFRJ ZA POČETNIKE - Beba Lončar

Desanka "Beba" Lončar is a former Yugoslav film actress. Known for her film career during the 1960s and 1970s, she first became a star in her native Yugoslavia before moving to Italy, where she achieved considerable success.
During the late 1950s, she was featured in on-camera speaking bits in kids' and youth programs on the recently launched TV Belgrade. She studied acting under the tutelage of director Soja Jovanović, who gave Lončar her film debut—an uncredited role in the 1960 film Diližansa snova.
Lončar's acting breakthrough came when she was cast, alongside two other first-time performers—twenty-year-old Boris Dvornik and fifteen-year-old Dušica Žegarac—in France Štiglic's Deveti krug, a Jadran Film-produced Holocaust story about a Jewish family from Zagreb. The film went on to achieve notable critical success. By the time Deveti krug was released, sixteen-year-old Lončar had already landed her first leading role—the character of a beautiful young girl, Sonja Ilić, in the teenage comedy Ljubav i moda, produced by Avala Film. The film became a sensation of unprecedented popularity in the country. Backed by a pop music soundtrack that gained its own popularity, especially the track "Devojko mala" sung by Đuza Stojiljković, the film became a commercial smash hit in communist Yugoslavia. Audiences responded enthusiastically to Lončar’s beauty and youthful charm, instantly making her an overnight star in the country and paving the way for her subsequent film career.
Already a bona fide star in Yugoslavia and a nationwide sex symbol, Lončar began obtaining parts in Avala Film co-productions with foreign production companies shot in Yugoslavia. Her career in Italian cinema started in 1964 when she was cast by Mauro Bolognini for his segment in La donna è una cosa meravigliosa. Her early roles in Italy reflected a recurring theme that would characterize her career abroad—Italian directors and producers often cast her as exotic and mysterious seductresses within the commedia all'italiana genre. (Wikipedia)