Encyclopedia
Sophia Loren is an
Academy Award-winning actress widely considered to be the most famous
Italian actress.
Biography
Early life and career
Sophia Loren was born Sofia Villani Scicolone in
Rome, Italy, the illegitimate daughter of engineer Riccardo Scicolone and aspiring actress,
Greta Garbo look-alike and piano teacher, Romilda Villani. Loren grew up impoverished in wartime
Pozzuoli, near
Naples sharing a small flat with her sister Maria, her grandparents and her uncles and aunts . She has said on many occasions that being born into and living with exteme poverty for most of her childhood gave her a strength of character that allowed her to succeed and appreciate every moment she has been given as a human being. Up until Sophia Loren was about 14 she was considered a skinny ugly duckling. Seemingly overnight, she bloomed into a tall, full breasted beauty.
In 1949, at age 15, Loren left for
Rome and a about a year later began her film career with bit parts in mostly minor Italian films. In 1951, Loren and her mother worked as extras in Quo Vadis, which was filmed in Rome and provided Loren with an early brush with Hollywood. She also appeared as Aida in Aida , in which the singing of Loren's role was dubbed by opera star
Renata Tebaldi which caught the eye of
Cecil B. Demille who once said of Loren that 'You could build mountains around that girl.'
Loren also supported her mother and sister by working as a model in the weekly illustrated romantic stories, called fumetti or fotoromanzi under the name, Sofia Villani or Sofia Lazzaro. She also took part in regional beauty contests, where she won several prizes. Loren was discovered by her future husband, the much older film producer Carlo Ponti, and they married on September 17, 1957, three days before her 23rd birthday. Their first marriage had to be annulled to keep Ponti from being charged with bigamy, and they remarried on April 9, 1966 but only after Sophia, Ponti and Ponti's first wife all obtained French citizenship thus enabling Carlo to divorce his first wife and subsequently marry Sophia without the ancient Catholic divorce laws looming over them. They would have two sons together, Carlo Ponti, Jr., and Edoardo Ponti.
Eventually Sofia Scicolone changed her name to Sophia Loren and appeared in film roles that emphasized her voluptuous physique, even appearing topless in the films Two Nights with Cleopatra and It's Him, Yes! Yes! These early films were the only times she would appear nude stating that she did not feel comfortable exposed to the camera as her nude state represented 'a lot of nakedness.' Loren's acting career took off upon meeting Vittorio De Sica and
Marcello Mastroianni in 1954. Many feel that her collaborations with De Sica would mark her finest work as an actress.
By the late 1950s, Loren's star began to rise in Hollywood, with films such as 1957's Boy on a Dolphin and
The Pride and the Passion in which she co-starred with
Frank Sinatra and
Cary Grant.
Cary Grant fell so deeply in love with Sophia that he ardently proposed marriage despite her obvious loyalty to Carlo Ponti and Grant's own union with actress and writer Betsy Drake.It is clear that Loren also fell in love but how serious their relationship was is still known only to them. Their romance is considered to be one of the most elusive romantic interludes by both
Hollywood stargazers and celebrity biographers alike.
International fame
Loren became an international film star with a five-picture contract with
Paramount Studios. Among her films at this time:
Desire Under the Elms with
Anthony Perkins, based upon the
Eugene O'Neill play;
Houseboat, a romantic comedy co-starring
Cary Grant; and George Cukor's
Heller in Pink Tights in which she appeared with blonde hair for the first time. Loren demonstrated considerable dramatic skills and gained respect as a dramatic and comedic actress, especially in Italian projects where she more freely expressed herself, although she gained great profiency in the
English language.
In 1960, her acclaimed performance in Vittorio De Sica's
Two Women, earned many awards including the
Cannes,
Venice and
Berlin Film Festivals' best performance prizes. Her performance was also awarded an Academy Award for Best Actress, the first major Academy Award for a non-English language performance.
Belying the typical portrayal of the beautiful actress as vacuous and emptyheaded, Loren was known for her sharp wit and insight. One of her most frequently-quoted sayings is her quip on her famous figure, "Everything you see, I owe to spaghetti."
During the 1960s Loren was one of the most popular actresses in the world, and continued to make films in both the U.S. and Europe, acting with the leading male stars. In 1964, her career came full circle when she received $1 million to act in
The Fall of the Roman Empire.
Among her best-known films of this period are
The Millionairess with
Peter Sellers,
Vittorio De Sica’s triptych
Ieri, oggi, domani with Marcello Mastroianni,
Peter Ustinov's Lady L
with Paul Newman,
and
Charlie Chaplin's final film, A Countess from Hong Kong with
Marlon Brando.
Despite the failure of many of her films to generate sales at the box office she has an impressive roster of beautifully photographed films, replete with famous co-stars, in which she invariably turns in a charming performance and wears some of the most lavish costumes ever created for the movies. These films include Breath of Scandal , Madame Sans Gene , Heller In Pink Tights and More Than A Miracle]] .
She also recorded well over two dozen songs throughout her career including a best-selling album of comedic songs with Peter Seller and reportedly had to fend off his romantic advances. It was partly due to Sellers' extreme infatuation with Loren that he split with his fist wife Anne Howe. Loren has made it clear to numerous biographers that Selller's affections were only reciprocated platonically.
Her struggles to have children were of worldwide interest. After suffering two very physically and emotionall painful public miscarriages, she was referred to Swiss fertility specialist Dr.Huebert de Watteville. He determined that Loren was deficent in estrogen and after perscribing regular injections of the hormone and bed rest for her entire term, Sophia became a mother. She has proudly stated that being a mother meant more to her than anything else she had accomplished in her life.
After becoming a mother of two sons her career slowed down and Loren moved into her 40s and 50s with roles in films including the last De Sica movie,
The Voyage, with
Richard Burton and Ettore Scola's
A Special Day with Mastroianni.
In 1980, she portrayed herself, as well as her mother, in a made-for-television
biopic adaptation of her autobiography. Actresses, Ritza Brown and Chiara Ferrari played Loren at younger ages. She made headlines in 1982 when she served an 18-day prison sentence in Italy on tax evasion charges, a fact that didn't damage her career or popularity.
In her 60s, Loren became selective in choosing her films and ventured into various areas of business including cook books, eyewear, jewellery and perfume. She also made well-received appearances in
Robert Altman's
Ready to Wear and the 1995 comedy
Grumpier Old Men is a 1995 [i] Warner Bros. [i] romantic comedy film [i] starring Walter Matthau [i] ...
playing a
femme fatale is a stock character [i], usually a villain [i]ous woman [i], who deceptively mislead ...
opposite
Walter Matthau and
Jack Lemmon.
In 1991, Loren received an honorary Academy Award for her contribution to world cinema and was declared "one of the world cinema's treasures".
Current activity
Loren is expected to appear in the 2007 Pirelli Calendar at the age of 72, although she has denied rumors that she will appear nude.
Miscellania
- Her measurements of 38C-24-38 and height of 5'8 are virtually unchanged to this day.
- Sophia's weight has been listed as 140- 145lbs. Her lowest weight on film is Heller In Pink Tights for which she weighed 127lbs and was laced into corsets that gave her an 18 inch waist. Her most full figured appearance onscreen is in It Started In Naples.
- Received an Oscar for Best Actress for the 1960 film Two Women. She became the first and still the only female Oscar winner to win for playing a character in a foreign language film.
- Few if any attempts have been made to copy Sophia's image the way Marilyn Monroe's look has been countless times. Loren's unrivaled natural curves , exquisite bone structure and regal bearing have proved virtually impossible to ape.
- Appeared in thirteen films with friend Marcello Mastroianni, who died in 1996 from pancreatic cancer.
- Sophia dislikes beauty salons and does her hair and nails herself.
- Her childhood nickname: Toothpick
- Other notable film roles were: Chimene in El Cid; Lucilla in The Fall of the Roman Empire with Alec Guinness; and Aldonza/Dulcinea in Man of La Mancha with Peter O'Toole.
- Was given the honour of carrying the Olympic flag during the Torino opening ceremonies in 2006.
- Italian actress Sonia Aquino portrayed Loren in HBO's 2004 Peter Seller's bio pic.
- She described Madonna's 2002 remake of Swept Away, as 'the worst movie I have ever seen in my entire life' and has taken younger celebrities to task for being graphically sexy off screen and wearing 'ripped jeans' calling the garmets an 'insult to the homeless.'
- Her sister, Anna Maria Scicolone, was formerly married to Romano Mussolini, a son of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
- The Archbishop of Genoa once said that although the Vatican opposed human cloning, "an exception might be made in the case of Sophia Loren".[2]
Filmography
- The Ballot
- Toto Tarzan
- The Six Wives of Barbablu
- I Am the Captain
- Hearts at Sea
- The Master of Vapor
- Milano Miliardaria
- The Wizard by Force
- Brief Rapture
- Quo Vadis
- It's Him!... Yes! Yes!
- Anna
- The Dream of Zorro
- The Favorite
- The Piano Tuner Has Arrived
- Girls Marked Danger
- Pilgrims of Love
- The Country of the Campanelli
- Two Nights with Cleopatra
- Good Folk's Sunday
- We Find Ourselves in Galleries
- Aida is an opera [i] in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi [i] to an Italian [i] libretto [i] by Antonio Ghislanzoni [i]...
- Africa Under the Seas
- A Day in Court
- Neapolitan Carousel
- The Anatomy of Love
- Poverty and Nobility
- The Gold of Naples
- Attila
- Scandal in Sorrento
- The Sign of Venus
- The Miller's Beautiful Wife
- The River Girl
- Too Bad She's Bad
- Lucky to Be a Woman
- Boy on a Dolphin
- The Pride and the Passion is an 1957 [i] historical film [i] drama made by Stanley Kram...
- Legend of the Lost
- Desire Under the Elms
- The Key
- The Black Orchid
- Houseboat
- That Kind of Woman
- The Millionairess
- Heller in Pink Tights
- It Started in Naples is an American [i] romantic comedy [i] film made by Paramount Pictures [i] ...
- A Breath of Scandal
- Two Women
- El Cid
- Boccaccio '70
- Lykke og krone
- Madame Sens-Gene
- The Condemned of Altona
- Five Miles to Midnight
- Showman
- Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
- Visit to the Stars
- The Fall of the Roman Empire
- Marriage - Italian Style
- Operation Crossbow
- Lady L
- Judith is a deuterocanonical [i] book, included in the Septuagint [i] and in the Roman Catholic [i] ...
- Arabesque
- A Countess from Hong Kong
- More Than a Miracle
- Ghosts - Italian Style
- Sunflower
- Lady Liberty
- The Priest's Wife
- White Sister
- Man of La Mancha
- The Voyage
- Verdict
- Oopsie Poopsie
- The Cassandra Crossing
- A Special Day
- Angela
- Blood Feud
- Brass Target
- Firepower
- Aurora by Night
- Ready to Wear
- Grumpier Old Men is a 1995 [i] Warner Bros. [i] romantic comedy film [i] starring Walter Matthau [i] ...
- Soleil
- Between Strangers
- Capsicum Fillings and Fish in the Face
- Lives of the Saints
- Friday or Another Day
External links
