Giorgia Meloni confidently stands among the world’s most influential figures, unfazed by the company she keeps.

Despite her petite stature of 5 feet 3 inches, Italy’s first female prime minister has consistently held her ground against today’s political giants, often emerging victorious.

Meloni’s journey began in a working-class, single-parent household, where she faced relentless bullying for her weight and modest attire.

Now, she maneuvers skillfully through the diplomatic arena, often surprising her male peers with her candid facial expressions that reveal her true thoughts.

Once labeled an extremist ultranationalist, Meloni has distanced herself from the overt neo-fascist roots of her early career, earning respect from centrist parties across the European Union.

Her influence extends to the White House, she has seen her approval ratings soar since her 2022 election, and her effective strategies against illegal immigration have even prompted Sir Keir Starmer to visit Rome for insights on curbing small boat crossings.

The cigarette-loving Italian leader has everyone wrapped around her little finger, from Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, to Donald Trump, the world’s most powerful – both of whom can’t stop showering her with compliments.

But the secret to her steely exterior and perfectionist drive can be traced back to the heartbreak of childhood, when a distant father walked away – creating a wound that would define her career.

‘You won’t be offended if I say you’re beautiful, right? Because you are,’ the U.S. president told Meloni while standing at the podium during his Egyptian ‘Peace 2025’ summit aimed at ending the Israel-Hamas war.

World leaders from over 20 different countries assembled in Sharm el-Sheik to sign the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire agreement, but the moment that went viral was Trump waxing lyrical over the Italian prime minister’s looks.

‘We have a woman – a young woman who is… I’m not allowed to say it because usually it’s the end of your political career if you say it. She’s a beautiful young woman.

‘Now, if you use the word “beautiful” in the United States about a woman, that’s the end of your political career. But I’ll take my chances,’ Trump joked.

Meloni stood behind him, expressionless, before smiling and nodding politely when he turned around to address her directly. 

It’s not the first time he has showered praise on the Italian leader; a hot mic caught him calling her ‘fantastic’ during a gathering at the White House in August about ending the war between Russia and Ukraine. 

It’s impossible to tell what she makes of the attention – whether she finds it flattering or patronising – but she’s certainly wielded Trump’s affection to her advantage when it comes to scoring political points on the world stage.

She was, after all, the first EU politician to be invited to the White House to negotiate a trade deal earlier in the year, after Trump introduced – then paused – 20 percent tariffs on the bloc.

There, she knew exactly what to say to illustrate her ideological affinity to the U.S. president, vowing to ‘make the West great again’ and valiantly join him in his ‘fight against “woke” and DEI ideology that would like to erase our history’.

‘Being a petite blonde woman might have been perceived as an obstacle or a weakness, but I never let this stop me,’ she wrote in her recent memoir ‘I Am Giorgia: My Roots, My Principles’. 

In its pages, she delved into how the behaviour of her negligent father shaped her ambition to rise to the top.

Her father Francesco, an accountant, had wanted Meloni’s mother, Anna, to have an abortion – but she changed her mind at the last minute, walking away from the backstreet clinic which was the only place a woman could have the procedure in 1976 Italy.

He then sailed off in a yacht to the Canary Islands to open a restaurant, only bothering to see his daughters when they flew out to him during summer holidays.

By 11, Meloni decided to cut contact with the parent, who taught her ‘the pain of not being loved enough’.

The agony of emotional abandonment would be instrumental, however, to her future success, because she then dedicated her life to ‘competing with men, seeking their approval, friendship… all of it is the result of that wound’. 

‘If this is who I am today, it is thanks to my father – for better or worse.’

Her negligent father wasn’t the last time Meloni would be let down by a man, but it was the last time she’d let it consume her.

The Italian prime minister announced her breakup with her long-term partner over Instagram in 2023 to her 4.7 million followers, two days after a string of embarrassing sexual comments the television journalist had made came to light.

‘My relationship with Andrea Giambruno, which lasted almost 10 years, ends here,’ she wrote on social media after off-air recordings emerged of Giambruno talking about having threesomes and foursomes with colleagues at his workplace Mediaset. 

‘Let’s have a threesome, even a foursome,’ he said to a woman he worked with, explaining how they needed another participant on their show.

The couple first met in a Mediaset studio, before Meloni was set to appear in a show after a day of political rallies.

She mistook him for her assistant and handed him a half-eaten banana before going on air, in an interaction Giambruno described as ‘love at first sight’. 

Since she was a child, Meloni was forced into being fiercely independent and detached from the judgements of those around her – qualities she still holds today.

Her dead-pan, brazen sense of humour was on full display in Egypt when she joked she would probably kill someone if she was forced to give up cigarettes.

She made the quip after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has pledged to make Turkey smoke-free, brought up her smoking habit.

‘You look great. But I have to make you stop smoking,’ he told Meloni, prompting laughter from Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron.

‘It’s impossible,’ Macron interjected, who has himself been spotted vaping, and has admitted to occasionally smoking a cigar to destress, despite introducing France’s controversial smoking ban.

‘I know, I know,’ Meloni replied. ‘I don’t want to kill somebody.’

The 48-year-old revealed in her book that she had started smoking again after quitting 13 years ago – and joked that cigarettes had helped her bond with foreign leaders, including Tunisian president Kais Saied. 

Meloni said in her book she grew up with a ‘sullen expression’, the exact same one she uses today ‘when I prepare to answer questions from the press’. 

But it’s the Italian prime minister’s visible dissatisfaction with her male counterparts that has been broadcast in viral clips all over the Internet.

Most recently, Meloni was caught rolling her eyes after the French president whispered to her while sat at the 51st G7 roundtable in June.

The reaction came as world leaders from the UK, U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the EU met in the luxury resort of Kananaskis, Alberta, amid deepening global crises in both Ukraine and the Middle East.

Meloni was caught on camera leaning over to hear what Macron was whispering to her.

Whilst high-profile politicians usually attempt to keep a poker face during proceedings, Meloni didn’t even attempt to hide her visceral reaction and appeared to roll her eyes at whatever Macron had told her.

That was not the first time she’s let the world know exactly what she’s thinking at important political events. 

Last year, a frustrated-looking Meloni rolled her eyes at a NATO summit in Washington DC before miming to look at an imaginary watch, after the then-U.S. President Joe Biden was 20-minutes late to a gathering. 

Clips of her clear dismay with the American leader were reposted time and time again on social media, overclouding the event celebrating the Western alliance’s 75th anniversary. 

In another awkward exchange, she had to guide a wayward Biden back to position after he wandered away during an important photo opportunity at the 50th G7 summit in Italy.

The politicians were gathered in Savelletri to watch a parachute drop at San Domenico Golf Club when Biden walked away from the group, leading a concerned Meloni to usher him back into the photo.

In a more recent awkward exchange, Meloni appeared to give side-eye to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz as they attended a high-stakes meeting about the Ukraine war in the East Room with Trump in August.

Meloni and Merz were among several European leaders who flew to Washington to back up Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

But it was the Italian prime minister who took the spotlight when she made several peculiar and indecipherable expressions as the German leader spoke of the importance of a ceasefire between the warring parties.

Unlike the scores of straight-laced politicians across the world who choreograph every glance and sentence, Meloni wears her heart on her sleeve, refusing to dilute her bold personality for the sake of the cameras.

In other interactions, however, the Italian premier looks more than happy to be chatting politics with her male colleagues.

She triggered a social media storm after her private meeting with the Syrian President, Ahmed al-Sharaa at the UN General Assembly in September.

There, a snap of Meloni and al-Sharaa sitting across from each other in armchairs, smiling longingly into each other’s eyes, drew much attention online over the ‘love look’ that the Italian prime minister gave to the Syrian leader. 

It’s not the first time she has sparked romantic rumours with high-profile men because of her intense stare. 

In fact, tech tycoon Musk was forced to deny he was having an affair with her after the pair were caught gazing lovingly at one another at the Global Citizen Awards in New York City last year.

The New York Post even dubbed it a ‘public love-in’ between the Tesla and Space X CEO and the Italian prime minister.

‘I was there with my Mom. There is no romantic relationship whatsoever with PM Meloni,’ Musk wrote on X in response to a post of a photo of the two of them gazing fondly at each other at a banquet table, which had the caption ‘we all know what happened next’.

In a speech before handing over the award, Musk said Meloni was ‘someone who is even more beautiful inside than outside’. The Italian leader replied that the U.S. entrepreneur was a ‘precious genius’.

Meloni requested that Musk be the person to hand her the award, while the tech billionaire flew to Italy twice in 2023 to meet with her.

She’s also had a fair share of viral moments with a number of European leaders, with each one sparking a heated discussion on social media because of the degree of unusual affection displayed in the photos.

At the 50th G7 summit in Apulia, Meloni shared a long embrace with Macron, warmly greeted Zelensky with a jubilant smile, and shared many a friendly laugh with then-prime minister, Rishi Sunak. 

His spokesperson admitted that the pair – regularly pictured joking together at meetings – ‘obviously get on’, while Sunak himself praised her for hosting the ‘incredibly successful G7 summit’, saying ‘Giorgia is fantastic’.

It was originally feared that Meloni – one of the most important politicians in Europe – wouldn’t enjoy the same chemistry with Starmer when he took office, but such speculations have been proven wrong.

He and Meloni enjoyed a pasta lunch at the picturesque Villa Doria Pamphilj when he visited her in Rome to discuss how she managed to slash illegal immigration by 60 percent.

‘You’ve made remarkable progress,’ in tackling migration, Starmer told her, in comments which angered many in the Labour party, including MP Diane Abbott, who labelled Meloni ‘a literal fascist’. 

Remarkably, Meloni also enjoys a close rapport with the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, despite being head of the Brothers of Italy – a party traditionally hostile to the EU.

In fact, the group has its roots in the post-World War II neo-fascist Italian Social Movement.

Meloni joined Youth Front, the youth wing of the party, aged 15, later becoming the president of the student branch of the movement’s successor, National Alliance.

In 2012, she co-founded the Brothers of Italy with fellow National Alliance veterans Ignazio La Russa and Guido Crosetto, winning just 4 percent of votes in the last election in 2018. 

Since then, she’s managed to rebrand its reputation from fringe and extremist to the country’s biggest party.

In European parliamentary elections last year, Brothers of Italy came out on top, winning 28.8 percent of the vote – more than four times what it took in the last European Union election in 2019, and exceeding the 26 percent it secured in the 2022 national ballot.

Despite describing herself as ‘truly reserved’ in her new memoir, it’s clear that Meloni knows how to perform in front of a camera.

On election day in 2022, she posed holding up two melons and winked to the camera in a risqué Instagram video, making a suggestive pun on her surname. 

‘September 25. I have said it all,’ she told voters with a smirk.

Whether her antics with the world’s most powerful men are carefully manufactured or totally spontaneous, it’s clear she knows the power of creating viral moments that’ll dominate the headlines – pushing her rivals out of frame.