[2]: 430–431 The daughter of American filmmaker Orson Welles and Italian actress Paola Mori, she is a former model, radio and TV personality, founder of a cosmetics line and designer of handbags and jewelry.
[9] She was baptized at the Good Shepherd Roman Catholic Church in Beverly Hills, with Frank Sinatra and actress Mercedes McCambridge serving as godparents.
[11] Her father's film, The Immortal Story (1968), was shot at the Welles family home outside Madrid, Spain, and she spent countless hours with him in the editing room.
She turned to modeling and appeared in layouts in Vogue, as well as runway work in Paris, Milan, London and New York, wearing the clothes of Valentino, Halston and Chanel.
[3] She became the news director at KAZM-AM radio in Arizona in the early-1970s and later a regional television personality and longtime spokeswoman for a major Southwestern automotive dealership.
[3] Influenced by her association with makeup icons Kevin Aucoin and Barbara Daly, Welles developed her own line of cosmetics and counted Diana, Princess of Wales, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Rivers and Oprah Winfrey among her clients.
She has supported free spay and neuter services in underserved communities and offered financial aid to various animal rescue groups worldwide.
[25] In 1989, the Welles estate and the Directors Guild of America successfully fought off an attempt by Turner Entertainment to colorize Citizen Kane.
[29] After years of failed attempts to complete her father's unfinished final film, The Other Side of the Wind,[30] Welles worked with filmmaker Filip Jan Rymsza and producer Frank Marshall to edit and release it.
"[33] Her remarks were likely directed at Netflix executives, who ignored her pleas months earlier to debut the movie at the Cannes Film Festival as originally planned.
[34] A statement by her was read at the Venice Film Festival, where she thanked the post-production team, saying, "Under the guidance of someone who knew him well, Peter Bogdanovich managed to get a very difficult job done.
"[35] In 2016, she explored a possible gallery exhibit of her father's paintings in New York and suggested a book based on his early letters and unpublished sketches, which came to fruition in 2019.
[42] With director Peter Bogdanovich, she took part in an American Film Institute Master Class after a 75th-anniversary screening of Citizen Kane at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood in November 2016.
[47] The documentary received favorable reviews, with The Hollywood Reporter's Todd McCarthy writing: "Freshly conceived, mordantly whimsical, light on its feet and fleet of mind, The Eyes of Orson Welles rightly makes no extensive claims for Welles' drawing and painting skills, but positions them honestly as one heretofore overlooked aspect of the man's polymorphously abundant talent.