Happy Birthday Sophia Loren! – 87 éves a legendás filmcsillag

“Everything you see I owe to spaghetti”

Sophia Loren is an Italian Academy Award-winning actress, known for her glamorous beauty, hourglass figure, and starring roles in movies during the classic Hollywood era opposite iconic male leads including Cary Grant, Marlon Brando, and Paul Newman.

Early Life

Sofia Villani Scicolone, known professionally as Sophia Loren, was born on 20 September 1934 in Rome, Italy, as the daughter of Romilda Villani and Riccardo Scicolone, a construction engineer of noble descent.

Loren lived in extreme poverty as a child, her father refused to marry her mother, leaving the piano teacher and aspiring actress without financial support. Loren met with her father three times including in 1976 at his deathbed, saying that she forgave him but had never forgotten his abandoning them. Loren’s parents had another child together, her sister Maria, in 1938. Loren has two younger paternal half-brothers. 

Loren and her sister lived with their mother and grandmother in Pozzuoli, near Naples.  During World War II, Pozzuoli was a frequent bombing target of the Allies. During one raid, as Loren ran to the shelter, she was struck by shrapnel and wounded in the chin. The family moved to Naples, where they stayed with relatives. Loren and her family returned to Pozzuoli after the war where Loren’s grandmother sold homemade cherry liquor from her living room, Villani played the piano, Maria sang, and Loren waited on tables and washed dishes.  

Loren entered the Miss Italia 1950 beauty pageant and won the title of “Miss Elegance 1950”.  

Movie Career

Encouraged to have acting lessons, Loren began her film career at age 16 in 1950. She had a few minor roles until a five-film contract with Paramount in 1956 launched her international career. Films included The Pride and the Passion, Houseboat, and It Started in Naples.

Loren’s performance as Cesira in the movie Two Women (1961) got her the Academy Award for Best Actress. She holds the record for having earned six David di Donatello Awards for Best Actress: Two Women; Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963); Marriage Italian Style (1964, for which she was nominated for a second Oscar); Sunflower (1970); The Voyage (1974); and A Special Day (1977).

After starting a family in the early 1970s, Loren made fewer film appearances. Since then, she has appeared in films including Grumpier Old Men (1995), Nine (2009) and Netflix movie The Life Ahead (2020).

Goodness Gracious Me!

Loren recorded this comedy song with actor Peter Sellers which became a chart hit reaching UK number 5 in 1960. Originally written to be included in the film The Millionairess which Loren and Sellers were filing the studio decided not to use it in the film but agreed to it being used in publicity.  Sellers admitted to being extremely infatuated by Loren at this time.

Other Ventures

A skilled chef she has written three cookbooks. In 1981 Loren became the first female celebrity to release her own perfume, following up with a personal eyewear line shortly after. In 1994 she published a book, Women and Beauty.

Awards

Loren has won an Academy Award for Best Actress, becoming the first winner for a non-English language performance, a Grammy Award, five Golden Globes, a BAFTA Award, a Laurel Award, the Volpi Cup at the Venice Film Festival and the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1991, she received the Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievements. Loren was named by the American Film Institute as the 21st greatest female star of Classic Hollywood Cinema.  She is currently the only living actress and the highest-ranked living person mentioned on the list.

Personal Life

Loren is a Roman Catholic. Her main residence is Geneva, Switzerland.

Loren was married for 50 years. She met her husband Carlo Ponti an Italian producer, in 1950, when she was 16 and he was 37. Though Ponti was separated from his first wife he was not legally divorced when Loren married him by proxy (two lawyers stood in for them) in Mexico in 1957. The couple had their marriage annulled in 1962 to avoid bigamy charges but continued to live together. In 1965, they became French citizens. Ponti eventually got a divorce in France, allowing him to marry Loren in 1966. Loren remained married to Ponti until he died in 2007.

They had two children, Carlo Jr – now an orchestral conductor, and Edoardo – a film director. Loren’s daughters-in-law are American actress Sasha Alexander and Hungarian violinist Andrea Mészáros. Loren has four grandchildren.

Loren served 17 of a 30-day jail term in 1982 for tax evasion.

In the mid-1950s, Loren and Cary Grant began an affair while filming the movie The Pride and the Passion. Grant was married but that didn’t stop him from pursuing Loren and asking her to marry him. The relationship didn’t last long, they split shortly before the filming ended, and she went on to marry Ponti.

2021

Loren is in What Would Sophia Loren Do? Out on Netflix now.