Elisa Leonelli was born in Modena, Italy. In 1970 she graduated from the University of Bologna with a BA in Film Aesthetics and became a film critic for the Pesaro Film Festival. During that time she developed an interest in photography and soon after moved to the United States to work on the production of avant-garde television (The Chicken Little Comedy Show, 1972; Beneath the War of the Worlds, 1974). In Los Angeles she began working as a photojournalist; her first assignment was to photograph the 100 best places in Los Angeles for Coast in 1974. She went on to photograph for Time, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, Herald Examiner, Los Angeles Magazine, Westways, and others. Between 1981 and 1986 Leonelli specialized in travel photography, visiting such countries as China, Mexico, Japan, Peru, Brazil, India, and Nepal. In 1984 she covered the Los Angeles Olympics and had her work published in the book Olimpiadi 1984. In 1987 Leonelli became the Los Angeles correspondent for the Italian film magazine Ciak, and served as the film editor of Venice Magazine from 1990 to 1999. In 1997 she received an MA in Critical Studies from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. In 2007 she wrote the book Robert Redford and the American West. Leonelli has written feature articles about film actors and directors for numerous Italian publications, including Epoca, Elle, Marie Claire, Gioia, Donna Moderna, Glamour, Myself, and the Spanish film magazine Cinemanía. She has been the Los Angeles correspondent for the Italian monthly Best Movie since 2005, editor of the Reynier Village Blog since 2009, and a regular contributor to Cultural Weekly since 2015.