Marisa Pavan, Oscar Nominee for ‘The Rose Tattoo,’ Dies at 91

The Italian actress Marisa Pavan never achieved the fame of her twin sister, Pier Angeli, a film ingénue of the 1950s who graced national magazine covers, and whose romance with James Dean and subsequent marriage to the singer Vic Damone became the stuff of Hollywood lore.

Ms. Pavan — analytical, at times defiant and, in her view, less conventionally beautiful than her sister — nevertheless carved out a successful career herself. She appeared in a number of high-profile films throughout the 1950s, including “The Rose Tattoo” (1955), for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actress.

And she did it her way, bristling at the star-making machine that she believed had turned her sister into a sexualized confection of the silver screen.

“The studios made her be like what they wanted her to be like, but from this moment on, it was not my sister I had in front of me anymore,” Ms. Pavan said in an interview with Margaux Soumoy, the author of a biography of Ms. Pavan, “Drop the Baby; Put a Veil on the Broad!” (2021). “She had become a studios’ product.”

Ms. Pavan died on Dec. 6 at her home in Gassin, a village on the French Riviera, Ms. Soumoy said. She was 91.

Maria Luisa Pierangeli, known as Marisa, and her fraternal twin, Anna Maria Pierangeli, were born on June 19, 1932, in Cagliari, on the island of Sardinia, to Luigi Pierangeli, an architect, and Enrichetta (Romiti) Pierangeli, who later helped guide the careers of her daughters. (Their younger sister, Patrizia, born 15 years after they were, also became an actress.)

The family moved to Rome when the twins were 3 and, during World War II, harbored a Jewish general in the Italian Army who was hiding from the Nazis and the Italian Fascists. His last name was Pavan, which Marisa, who had grown close to him, would eventually adopt as her screen name.

Her sister’s career started in her teens, when she was discovered on a street in Rome. When Mr. Pierangeli died in 1950, the family relocated to the United States to further her career.

Marisa had no interest in the limelight until a friend of the family, Albert R. Broccoli, an agent who would go on to produce the James Bond film franchise, invited her to visit the set of “What Price Glory” (1952), a film set during World War I starring James Cagney and directed by John Ford.

Once she was there, the producer Sol Siegel asked her if she could sing in French. She could, and she did. “I sang a song of Jacqueline François,” Ms. Pavan said in a 2015 interview with Film Talk, an online film journal. She recalled Mr. Siegel responding, “You’re going to test tomorrow!”

“I took all of this as a joke,” Ms. Pavan said. But she took the script home, learned the scene and returned the next day.

She got the part — a French girl who falls in love with a U.S. Marine, played by Robert Wagner — and discovered a passion for acting.

Her career reached its pinnacle three years later with “The Rose Tattoo,” based on a Tennessee Williams play. Ms. Pavan played Rosa, the rebellious daughter of a grief-stricken Sicilian widow (Anna Magnani) whose life in a town on the Gulf of Mexico takes a turn when she meets an ebullient trucker (Burt Lancaster).

Her sister, who by then went by the name Pier Angeli, had a long-term contract with MGM that limited her freedom to choose her roles and control her image, Ms. Soumoy wrote. But Ms. Pavan wished instead to preserve her independence and worked with various studios.

“From the moment I realized that I wanted to build a career as an actress, I kept telling my agents to only find me quality parts that would fit my own personality and tastes,” Ms. Pavan was quoted as saying in Ms. Soumoy’s book. “The last thing I wanted was to be kept prisoner under contract to one studio like Anna was.”

Her other notable roles included the noblewoman Catherine de Medici in “Diane” (1956), a romance set in the 16th century that starred Lana Turner; the wartime fling of Gregory Peck’s conflicted suburban husband and father in “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit” (1956); and the love interest of Tony Curtis in the murder mystery “The Midnight Story” (1957).

Ms. Pavan married the French film and stage star Jean-Pierre Aumont in 1956. He died in 2001.

Her sister’s life ultimately took a tragic turn as she encountered a faltering career, a series of unhappy relationships and struggles with mental and physical health. In 1971, Ms. Angeli was found dead at 39.

Although speculation of suicide has swirled for years, Ms. Pavan remained adamant that her sister’s death was accidental, a reaction to a medication a doctor had given her during a bout of anxiety. It was a loss from which Ms. Pavan never fully recovered.

“She felt like she had lost half of herself,” Ms. Soumoy said.

Ms. Pavan is survived by her sons, Jean-Claude and Patrick Aumont; her sister Patrizia; six grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

Her eventual parting with the movie business appeared to stem from one clash in particular. While filming the splashy historical romance “Solomon and Sheba” (1959), the headstrong Ms. Pavan squared off against a producer after many of her scenes were cut, and threatened to leave the project. The move resulted in her effective blacklisting by studios, according to her biography.

Ms. Pavan pivoted to television, making appearances on shows like the police procedural “Naked City,” the snappy private investigator drama “The Rockford Files” and the soap opera “Ryan’s Hope.” She acted into the early 1990s. Late in life, she expressed no regret over her fate in Hollywood.

“It was not in my nature to compromise,” she told Film Talk. “They did change my sister; they made her up like a pinup girl. I could wear a wig to play a certain part, but they could not change me in life.”