Lory Del Santo: A Life of Tragedy and Resilience

Lory Del Santo has lived a thousand lives, between tragedies and rebirths. In the 1980s, she met Eric Clapton, with whom she had a son, Connor: "When he was born, it was truly the most beautiful day of my life. Unforgettable," she told Corriere della Sera. Connor tragically died in New York on March 20, 1991: he fell into the void from a window accidentally left open on the 53rd floor of the skyscraper where he lived with his mother. He was four and a half years old. At the time of Conor's death, Lory Del Santo had already left Clapton. "There was nothing regular in our story, but I didn't care. When the child was born, he took him in his arms and said: 'I am a father'." The suicide of Loren As a mother, Lory had to face another impossible grief. The suicide of her other son Loren, fathered by a man whose identity she long refused to reveal (she later disclosed in 2020 that it was a German man, Dennis Schaller). Loren died by suicide in 2018, at just 19 years old. "With him, it was different, psychologically I suffered less because I realized I had not understood. Loren was sick and no one had noticed. He seemed special to me, he never bothered me, did not disturb, did not ask questions. Maybe, since he could not be cured, it was better this way. He was an angel meant to fly to heaven." The other son Devin Even with Devin, her second son, the relationship is not easy: "For me, he is an indecipherable picture, he is the only one who calls me Loredana. He changed a lot since what happened with Loren: they lived together, it marked him deeply. Now he has withdrawn into the house, he does not want to go out anymore. But he has the right to live as he wants." The men Many relationships, but also legends built around her character as a femme fatale. "Adnan Khashoggi, for example: a scoop that I had contributed to creating by tipping off a journalist from Novella 2000," she recounts. The relationship with Gianni Agnelli was real, however: "A two-year relationship, without sex." Craxi? "He tried to court me, but he had too many women." And then the story about Sergio Leone. "He was shooting Once Upon a Time in America with Robert De Niro and I went to his office at Eur with my book to ask him for a small part. He flipped through the photos, then disappeared into another room and called me. I went and found him naked. There was a double bed. He hugged me and I told him: no, sorry, look, I'm glad to be here, you're very nice, but I have to go. Inside me, I thought: but you haven't even offered me a part!".