Before Mary Carey ran for governor of California and Marilyn Chambers ran for Vice President, there was Cicciolina.

She was born in Budapest. Her stepfather was an official in the Ministry of the Interior, her mother a midwife. In 1964, she began working for the Hungarian modelling agency, M.T.I. According to her memoirs, she lost her virginity at sixteen with a student. In her memoirs and in a 1999 TV interview, she claimed that she had provided Hungarian authorities with information on American diplomats staying at a Budapest luxury hotel where she worked as a maid in the late 1960s.

Naturalized by marriage and settled in Italy, she met pornographer Riccardo Schicchi in early 1970s, beginning in 1973, achieved fame with a radio show called "Voulez vous coucher avec moi?" on Radio Luna . For that program she adopted the name "La Cicciolina", meaning "cuddles" in Italian (then moved to other variants: calling the fans "Cicciolini", her teddybear "Cicciolino"). Although she appeared in several films since 1970, she made her filming debut with her own name in 1975 with La liceale (U.S. title: The Teasers) playing Monica, a lesbian classmate of Gloria Guida. In 1978, on the RAI show "C'era due Volte" her breasts were the first to be seen bared on Italian TV.

Her first film of exclusive hardcore pornography was Il telefono rosso in 1983. In her films, she often appeared in group sex scenes with multiple male and female partners, often engaging in sexual activities such as anal sex, double penetration, and watersports. In her 1986 film Cicciolina Number One - Horsepower, her counterpart Denise Dior is seen performing fellatio on a horse, sometimes leading to the misconception that it was Staller who performed this sexual act. She starred in her last porn film in 1989.

Staller married American sculptor Jeff Koons in 1991. Koons produced sculptures and paintings of Staller and him having sex which were exhibited as "Made in Heaven". Their marriage broke up in 1992, and their son Ludwig was born shortly afterwards. Staller left the US with the child, and a lengthy custody battle ensued. Koons won custody in 1998 but the son remains with Staller in Italy.

Around year 2000 she used surgery to enlarge her breast. Now it is pretty different from the delicate lolita-shaped breast that she used to show in her top celbrity period naked scenes. The difference can be seen in the pictures portraying her naked for a temporary exhibition dedicated to nature and seasons which took place in Rome in 2006.

In 1979 she was elected the leading candidate of the "Lista del Sole", Italy's first Green Party. In 1985 she switched to the Partito Radicale, campaigning against nuclear energy and NATO membership, for human rights, and against starvation anywhere in the world. She was elected to the Italian parliament in 1987, with 20.000 preferences, representing the Lazio district of Rome. In that election, she was actually the second most voted person in the Radical Party, after the leader Marco Pannella, but she was not re-elected at the end of her term.

She announced in September 1990, when it was becoming clear that the Gulf war was inevitable, "I am available to make love with [Iraqi dictator] Saddam Hussein to achieve peace in the Middle East". She renewed the offer in October 2002, when Iraq was resisting international pressure to allow inspections for weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and in April 2006 made the same offer to Osama bin Laden.

She continues to be active in politics, advocating a safe future without nuclear energy and with absolute sexual freedom including the right to sex in prisons. She is against all forms of violence including the death penalty and the use of animals for fur or scientific experimentation. She is for the decriminalisation of drugs, against censorship of any kind, in favour of sex education in schools, and for objective information about AIDS. She has proposed a tax on automobiles to reduce the damages of smog and fund the defence of nature.

In January 2002, she began exploring the possibility of campaigning in Hungary, where she was born, to represent Budapest's industrial Kőbánya district in the Hungarian parliament but failed to collect enough signatures for a non-partisan candidacy. In the same year she ran in local elections in Monza, Italy, promising to convert a prominent building into a gambling casino, but attracted few votes. In 2004 she announced that she would run for mayor of Milan in 2006 with a similar promise.

Whatever the reasons for her political activity, the publicity cannot fail to help her commercial interests whether she wins or loses elections.