Carmina Piccoli Rossi

Carmina Piccoli Rossi (Born 25 April 1940 (estimated due to no birth certificate)) in New York to Italian immigrant parents.

Her Father, Ernesto Piccoli Rossi, was a labor agent. Her mother, Calvina Piccoli Rossi, was a nightclub singer and is known to have sung with Billie Holiday in New York in the late 1930s. Carmina received no formal education. She worked in her uncle's ice cream parlour for most of her teenage years.

In 1961 she became a dancer in a downtown bar in N.Y, where she was spotted by an Avant garde film maker. Subsequently, she starred in a number of low budget art films.

By the mid 1960's she had fallen in with the N.Y art and dance crowd and was performing/dancing at functions twice a week.Critics have called her 1960 performances "visionary" (poetry review), "way ahead of her time" (gladmag), and "simply vulgar" (New York times).

Through the 1970s she worked as a voice over actress and did many documentary narrations. Her popularity in this field was boosted magnificently due to her deep, raspy, wheezy voice which she acquired from a 20 - a - day smoking habit since the age of 12.

In the 1980s she moved to Greece for the majority of the decade to unwind after the death of her long term lover, a high profile pop artist.

In the 1990s she moved to London. Close friends in New York reveal that she is the inspiration for "Estelle Leonard", Joey Tribianni's agent in the American hit comedy "Friends".

She still resides in London and is currently the manager of songwriter Edward Larrikin and his band The Pan I Am.