Elsa Martinelli, an Italian fashion model turned actress whose Hollywood career included roles opposite Kirk Douglas in “The Indian Fighter” and John Wayne in “Hatari!,” died on Saturday in Rome. She was 82.

Her daughter, Cristiana Mancinelli Scotti, said the cause was cancer.

Ms. Martinelli’s modeling career was already on the upswing in 1955 when a photograph of her in Vogue was spotted by Mr. Douglas’s wife, Anne Buydens. He was producing “The Indian Fighter,” a western, and was seeking an actress to play Onahti, the daughter of a Sioux chief, who falls in love with his character, a scout leading a wagon train through Native American territory.

“There was a shot of an Italian girl — long dark hair, dark eyes — coming out of the water soaking wet, a man’s shirt clinging to her voluptuous body,” Mr. Douglas wrote in his autobiography “The Ragman’s Son” (1988). “Anne said, ‘This girl would make a fantastic Indian.’ She did look terrific.” He tracked her down in New York, but when he spoke to her by telephone she was skeptical that it was Mr. Douglas calling until he sang a song from his film “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.”

“Dio mio! Keerka Dooglas!” Mr. Douglas said she exclaimed.

Ms. Martinelli had relatively few lines, but Variety’s reviewer noticed: “Sex in the person of Elsa Martinelli, Italian actress introduced here, and the relationship of her Indian maid character with Douglas, is a story factor and ballyhoo point.”