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After finishing her studies in Pennsylvania, it was time for the promising actress to make her way to California. She joined the Pasadena Playhouse and continued to thrive on the stage.

But even though Rome starred in productions from Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Tennessee Williams, her first shot at Hollywood fame in movies was a disaster. She lost out on her first significant role in the film Candy, sent to Rome by her agent, and after another year with the Pasadena Playhouse, she once again tried her luck in Europe.

Sydne Rome
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There was no denying that she was a beautiful woman. But in that day and age, it wasn’t enough to look good with clothes on.

“I had a terrible time in Rome with young Italian directors who wanted me to play in the nude,” she told the Daily News. “I didn’t want to do it. Now my view is different. Playing in the nude has become part of our trade. Provided it is really called for in the script and doesn’t involve brutal love scenes, it’s OK by me.”

Sydne Rome starred mostly in minor Italian films heading into the 1970s.

Compared to Birgitte Bardot
Then, in 1972, she got her big breakthrough when she worked with director Roman Polanski in the film What? Though critics hated the movie, it was a big step forward for Sydne. In 1973, she also wed photographer and cameraman Emilio Lari.

By that stage, the young American actress was being compared to the likes of Brigitte Bardot. The Sunday Telegraph even dubbed her “the up-and-coming Jean Harlow or Raquel Welch, the ticking Sex Bomb of the nineteen-eighties” in 1979.

That comparison could have put a lot of pressure on a young actress’s shoulders. Sydne, though, took it in her stride.

“[Brigitte] is wonderful, exciting, very open, terribly available. She is everyman’s dream. Perhaps at first look, I seem less available. But I think audiences will take a second look and think differently. And I am a better actress than Bardot,” she said.

Though Rome seemed to have everything it took to make it in Hollywood, she just never seemed able to take the final step. Her first film was in 1969, starring in Some Girls Do, but it didn’t help her career. So instead, she tried her luck in another part of the world, starring in many French, Italian, and German films.

Sydne Rome, David Bowie
Evening Standard/Getty Images
As the 1970s ended, Rome landed a role in David Hemmings’s film Just a Gigolo, starring alongside the great David Bowie.

“We were friends. When I was going to Berlin to have the first [script] readings, I was told that they hadn’t found the leading man. He [Bowie] had an interest in that period of Germany, between the two world wars, so I thought maybe David would like to do this part. I called him and asked if I could send him the script. We did so and he accepted,” she told NME in 2021.

Romance with David Bowie
It was even rumored that the two were dating at one point – which she confirmed in a later interview on Italian television.

“I met him because he called me to accompany him to Paris to see the premiere of his film, and I accepted [the offer for Just a Gigolo] immediately,” Rome. “We were together for a year. He was so much fun and appetizing.”

Rome moved to the city of Rome, which she called her home for over ten years. With the arrival of the 1980s, she became a musician, releasing several albums, all of which unfortunately failed to take off.

Synde starred in many productions, including the 1980 film L’uomo puma [The Pumaman]. With a meager 2.2 out of 10 rating on the International Movie Database, it doesn’t take a film expert to gauge its success. Rome also began doing documentaries, including one about Formula 1, shot in Rio De Janeiro.