ROME (Reuters) – She had no desire to be just another smiling face in Italian politics. So when porn star Milly D’Abbraccio designed her campaign posters, it was obvious she was going to show off her bottom.

Targeting her male fan base, the veteran of Italy’s adult entertainment industry has plastered images of her derriere all around the Eternal City in a bid to win a seat in Rome’s city hall.

If elected, D’Abbraccio wants to create a red light area with strip clubs, erotic discos and sex shops called “Love City” just kilometres away from the Vatican.

“It would be something cute, clean — nothing to do with prostitution,” said the actress whose films include “The Kiss of the Cobra” and “Paolina Borghese, Imperial Nymphomaniac”.

D’Abbraccio, in her 40s, isn’t the first adult entertainer to dip her painted toenails into Italian politics. Ilona Staller, known as “Cicciolina”, sat in parliament in the 1980s and was famous for her impromptu stripteases.

“It was simpler then,” D’Abbraccio said. Public nudity isn’t the guaranteed attention-grabber it once was, she noted.

D’Abbraccio hopes to capitalize on increasing disenchantment with Italian politics. The recession-prone nation votes on Sunday and Monday in elections to pick a prime minister as well as lawmakers, mayors and city councilors.

“People don’t want to see these politicians’ faces anymore,” she told Reuters in an interview from her Rome apartment.

She said she was tapping into her popularity among pornography fans as “an act of generosity” to help Italy’s socialists, who are fielding her in the municipal race.

“I am the derriere of the Socialist party,” she concluded.

Silvio Berlusconi, who leads in opinion polls to become prime minister for a third time, drew scorn recently for saying his party boasted the prettiest women in politics. Critics called him a chauvinist.

D’Abbraccio also objected, but for another reason.

If D’Abbraccio wins, she says she will represent Romans from the district that is home to Cinecitta studios, Italy’s version of Hollywood where classics like “La Dolce Vita” were filmed.

“I will reign over Cinecitta, if I get the votes,” she said, reclining on a gold-rimmed, chaise lounge in her living room.

As for experience, D’Abbraccio acknowledges she is a political novice but she did play a powerful lawmaker in an adult film called “L’Onorevole”.

“I played the part of the speaker of the lower house of parliament, who got very hot and then let herself go,” she said.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Ilona Staller, known as “La Cicciolina,” sued her ex-husband Jeff Koons on Wednesday, saying he failed to pay about $1.5 million euros ($2.3 million) in child support ordered by an Italian court.

Koons, a one-time Wall Street commodities broker who holds the record as the highest-paid living artist, has paid just under 200,000 euros ($310,600) in child support since 1998, according to the lawsuit filed in New York State Court.

A representative for Manhattan-based Koons was not immediately available for comment.

The couple divorced in 1994, and Staller took their son to Italy. Four years later, their divorce was confirmed by an Italian court.

“I always felt my government would do the right thing and get my child back,” Koons told the New York Newsday newspaper in 2003. “Now I realize that I might not be able to see and live with my child again.”

Koons was originally awarded custody of the couple’s son, who was born in 1992. But custody was later given to Staller, and Koons was ordered to pay 1,500 Euros ($2,330) per month in child support.

“At no time during the Italian proceedings did Koons challenge the subject-matter or personal jurisdiction of the Italian courts,” the lawsuit said.

Koons and Staller married in Budapest in 1991. That year, Koons unveiled “Made in Heaven,” a series of paintings and sculptures that showed the couple in sexual acts.

The 52-year-old Koons burst on the art scene in the 1980s aided by an image consultant, and his contentious split from Staller, who has been active in Italian politics since the late 1970s, added to his fame.

Last November, Koons 3,500-pound (1,600-kg) sculpture, “Hanging Heart (Magenta/Gold),” sold at Sotheby’s for $23,561,000, eclipsing its high pre-sale estimate of $20 million and establishing a record for any living artist’s work at auction.