Eva Robin's (or Robbins in her younger years) was born Roberto Maurizio Coatti in Sienna, Italy in December 1958. She has never legally changed her birth name and still occasionally uses it.
Eva was born a boy, but by age 13 she felt that was really a girl. She adopted the name Eva Robin's when age 19, and since age 21 has lived full-time as a woman. Eva calls herself a hermaphrodite and not a transsexual, claiming that she takes no female hormones and that her body feminised rather than masculinised at puberty. Her modest height (5ft 4 inch or 164cm) and slight build (weighing about 120lbs or 54kg in her 30's) is typically female, although her voice is quite masculine. She is happy with her body, and has no plans for sex-reassignment surgery. Eva's supposed hermaphrodite condition has caused much discussion as physically she exhibits none of the characteristics typical of most intersex or pseudo-hermaphrodite medical conditions. A simpler explanation is that she's been taking female hormones (e.g. from contraceptive pills) since her teens, and this seems to be confirmed by reports that a transgender neighbour began supplying Eva with hormones when she was 16. Eva's overall physical appearance with obvious and well-formed breast development (apparently un-enhanced by any surgery) that reaches Tanner IV is certainly consistent with this, and it may have been early enough to stop facial hair developing. Either way - hermaphrodite or transsexual - Eva has chosen to live her life as a woman, and one of considerable beauty. A poll by a Italian radio station in the early 1990's asked one thousand men who would they would most like to marry, Eva came an impressive third with 17% of the vote - beaten only by the Danish model Helena Christensen and a popular Italian TV presenter, Daniela Vergara. It would be difficult to doubt that Eva was a woman in every sense but for the revealing of her anatomy in some movies. There were rumours that she had sex re-assignment surgery in 1990's - slightly supported by a lack of photographs appearing of her lower sexual organs since the film Mascara in 1989. However paparazzi photos continued to suggest that she had substantial male genitalia beneath her panties. This supports the view that she takes only small amounts of female hormones - carefully balancing keeping her body feminised (e.g. no facial hair) with maintaining a "male libido" most of the time. By contrast, long-term use of high levels of female hormones by pre-op MTF transsexual often results in a total loss of sex drive, chemical castration, and dramatic shrinkage in the size of their male sexual organs. In a 2002 interview for the Italian Internet ISP libero.it the interviewer presented Eva as Roberto Coatti, he/she stated that she has never had a sex reassignment operation, and that it would be a negative thing "for a person that has found herself". She's since been explicit that she doesn't want to "cut my penis cut off" as it's been "so good to her", she has relationships with women but she also seeks relationships with men so that she doesn't "lose touch with my femininity".
Career Eva then began a very successful career as an actress. This started with some dubious soft porn efforts such as Evaman (1980), but she successfully broke in to the mainstream. Although she often laments in interviews that she is rarely offered roles not dependent upon her "surprise" factor, most of her movies do in fact avoid this. Eva's most famous movie moment is almost certainly when she appears as the topless "Woman on Beach" in the world-wide hit Tenebre (1982), no hint is given that she's not a genetic woman.
She followed this movie with a minor role in the rather dire films Hercules (1983) and The Adventures of Hercules (1985), ironically one of the many complaints made about these films by movie critics is that in Greek mythology Eva's character - Dedalos (a misspelling of "Daedalus") - is a man, not a woman. Since then Eva has had starring roles in a series of mainly Italian language movies such as Mascara (1989), Belle al Bar (1994), Luna e l'altra (1996), I Miei Piu' Cari Amici (1998) and the award winning L'auto del Silenzio (2001). Eva apparently wanted to be credited by her birth name of "Roberto" for L'auto del Silenzio, but the producers insisted on using "Eva" given that she was playing a straight female lead role in a PG rated film. Eva had a rather unsuccessful prime-time TV show called Primadonna in the 1990's. In 2003 she star'ed, age 44, as a fading lesbian singer in the mediocre Cattive Inclinazioni (Bad Inclination). Once again she had the lead female role - being credited as Eva Robin's. Her many scantily clad or apparently ledsbian scenes were carefully filmed to avoid confusing those in the audience who assumed that she was a woman, whilst also titillating those "in the know".
In the early
2000's Eva had a leading role in the second series of the
popular
Italian TV show Il
Bello Delle Donne (The Beautiful Women). She plays 'Pola'
(male name Fabietto Fogliett),
the transgender and transitioned daughter of a florest, Ingred. Highlights of the convoluted
soap-like series include: her father being revealed as also a MTF
transwoman; Pola
converting the flower shop of her now deceased mother to a lingerie store;
and another character (Felicetto) risking the rejection of his family by
declaring his love for Pola. |
Eva Robbins/Robin's - Filmography to 2005: In Production: Completed: Distributed: |
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