Aitana Sánchez-Gijón de Angelis (born 5 November 1968) is a Spanish and Italian film actress.

Aitana Sánchez-Gijón was born in Rome on 5 November 1968,[1] to a Spanish father Ángel Sánchez-Gijón Martínez [es], a history lecturer exiled from Francoism, and an Italian mother, Fiorella de Angelis, a lecturer.

[3] Sánchez-Gijón made her television debut as an actress at age 16 in the high school series Segunda enseñanza, playing Sisi, a lesbian teenager.

[6] Her breakthrough role as Elena in the 1989 film Bajarse al moro launched her career.

[7][8] Best known for her career in Spanish cinema, Sánchez-Gijón first became known internationally for her portrayal of Victoria Aragon, a pregnant and abandoned Mexican-American winegrower's daughter who is helped by travelling salesman Paul Sutton (Keanu Reeves) in A Walk in the Clouds (1995) She has since built a reputation as an international star in films such as Manuel Gomez Pereira's Boca a Boca (1996), Bigas Luna's The Chambermaid on the Titanic (1997), Jaime Chávarri's Sus Ojos Se Cerraron (1998), Gabriele Salvatores' adaptation of the Niccolò Ammaniti novel I'm Not Scared (2003) and Brad Anderson's The Machinist (2004).