Adrienne Corri

Who is Adrienne Corri?

Adrienne Corri is a British actress. She was born Adrienne Riccoboni, the daughter of Olive Smethurst and Italian father Luigi Riccoboni. Her distinctive auburn hair came from her mother's Lancastrian Mancunian Smethurst family. In the 1930s her father Luigi ran the Crown Hotel, Callander, Perthshire. She had one brother.

Despite having significant roles in many films, Corri is most notable for one of her smaller parts, that of Mrs. Alexander, the wife of the writer Frank Alexander, in Stanley Kubrick's 1971 dystopian film A Clockwork Orange. Though not originally cast in this role, she was brought in after the first actress left. Corri was offered the role after two actresses had already withdrawn from the film, one of them, according to Malcolm McDowell, because she found it "too humiliating -– because it involved having to be perched, naked, on Warren Clarke's shoulders for weeks on end while Stanley decided which shot he liked the best." Corri had no such qualms about appearing naked, joking to McDowell, "Well Malcolm, you’re about to find out that I’m a real redhead."