Western Asia, West Asia, Southwest Asia or Southwestern Asia are terms that describe the westernmost portion of Asia. The terms are partly coterminous with the Middle East, which describes a geographical position in relation to Western Europe rather than its location within Asia. Due to this perceived Eurocentrism, international organizations such as the United Nations, have replaced Middle East and Near East with Western Asia. This region and Europe are collectively referred to as Western Eurasia.

The world's earliest civilizations developed in Western Asia. For most of the last three millennia, the region has been united under one or two powerful states; each one succeeding the last, and at times, eastern and western based polities. The main states in this regard were the Assyrian Empire, the Babylonian Empire, the Achaemenid Empire, the Seleucid Empire, the Parthian Empire, the Roman Empire, the Sassanid Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the Umayyad Caliphate, the Abbasid Caliphate, the Safavid Empire, and the Ottoman Empire.

Aria Asia Maria Vittoria Rossa Argento (born 20 September 1975) is an Italian actress, singer, model and director.

Her mother is actress Daria Nicolodi and her father is Dario Argento, an Italian film director, producer and screenwriter, well known for his work in the Italian giallo genre and for his influence on modern horror and slasher movies. Her maternal great-grandfather was composer Alfredo Casella.

When Asia Argento was born in Rome, the city registry office refused to acknowledge Asia as an appropriate name, and instead officially inscribed her as Aria Argento.^{[citation needed]} She nonetheless uses the name Asia Argento professionally. Argento has said that as a child she was lonely and depressed due, in part, to her parents' work. Her father used to read her his scripts as bedtime stories. At age eight, Argento published a book of poems. At the age of 14, she ran away from home. She was an introvert and read to make up for having no friends.

In an interview with Filmmaker magazine she stated that she was agoraphobic while she was writing Scarlet Diva and that she could not leave her apartment for months. She said: "I was afraid to go out of my apartment for a long time, I could only go out to work."