Sofia
Villani Scicolone was born on September 20, 1934 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. Sophia
Loren was born in a hospital charity ward, and raised in poverty by her single
mother. Her father was married to another woman, and refused to adopt his
illegitimate daughter, but did allow her to take his surname. As a girl, she
was so thin she was taunted and nicknamed 'Stuzzicadenti' -- 'Toothpick'.
By
14, though, she won "Princess of the Sea" honors in a beauty pageant.
By 15 she was working as a model, and met producer Carlo Ponti, who was one of
the judges in a pageant she won. He hired an acting coach to tutor her, and at
16 she was in her first film, “Le Sei Mogli di Barbablù”. At 17 Ponti cast her
in her breakthrough role as the commoner who caught the prince's eye in the
filmed opera “La Favorita”. The next year she played the lead in a film of “Aida”,
but in both opera films her songs were dubbed by better singers.
Loren
quickly became a major star and pin-up girl in Italy, and her first film to
find success beyond her native land was “La Donna del Fiume”, released in
America as “The River Girl”. Her first English-language film was “Boy on a
Dolphin” with Alan Ladd in 1957, where she was memorable mostly for emerging
from the water in a wet, skin-tight, transparent dress. She starred in numerous
American films through the rest of that decade, but most were received
lukewarmly at best. In 1960 she returned to Italy to star in the brutal wartime
drama “La Ciociara” (“Two Women”) with Jean-Paul Belmondo. She won the Best
Actress Oscar for her performance -- the first Academy Award ever given for a
performance not in English -- but Loren had been unable to attend and no-one
from the Academy called to tell her she had won. She found out the following
morning, when Cary Grant, an ex-lover and Loren's co-star in “Houseboat”,
called to offer his congratulations.
Through
the 1960s and 1970s, Loren worked in both European and American projects. Her
best Italian films include “Una Giornata Particolare” (“One Particular Day”)
with Loren as a bored housewife and Marcello Mastroianni as her gay
acquaintance as Hitler comes to town, “Matrimonio all'Italiana” (“Marriage
Italian Style”) with Loren as the hooker who lures Mastroianni into marriage,
and “L' Oro di Napoli” (“The Gold of Napoli”), with Loren as a pizza-maker who
loses her wedding ring.
Despite
her va-va-va-voom image, her American work rarely attracted more than minimal
box office. She sought vengeance against her lover Charlton Heston after he
killed her father in “El Cid”, and she played the luscious double agent rescued
by Gregory Peck in “Arabesque”, the jinxed girl who welcomed tugboat captain
William Holden in “The Key”, and the whore idolized by Peter O'Toole in “Man of
La Mancha”.
It
was controversial in her native Italy when Loren married her mentor Carlo Ponti
in 1957. Not only was he 45 to her 23, but he had been married previously, and
neither the Catholic Church nor Italian government recognized his Mexican
divorce. Ponti was charged with bigamy, but the charges were dropped when she
had their marriage annulled. They continued living together -- scandalous at
the time -- and remarried after his legal problems had been cleared. Still
happily married, Ponti and Loren made three dozen films together, and they may
have consciously struck back with their “Ieri, Oggi, Domani”, a 1963 comedy
that poked fun at a Catholic priest and gently mocked Italian law on birth
control.
Still
beautiful at 72, she posed for the 2007 Pirelli calendar -- not as a stunt or
as part of a senior citizens collection, but alongside models and movie stars
half her age, including Penelope Cruz, Hilary Swank, and Naomi Watts.
Loren's
sister, Anna Maria Scicolone, was married to Romano Mussolini, whose father was
Italy's fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Their daughter, Loren's niece,
Alessandra Mussolini, was elected to the Italian Parliament as a neo-Fascist in
1992.
Credited
under her real name Sofia Scicolone she appeared in two Euro-westerns: “The
Dream of Zorro” (1951) as Conchita and “The Return of Pancho Villa” (1950) as a
secretary.
Today
we celebrate one of the true icons and living legends in the films industry
Sofia Scicolone aka Sofia Loren on her 80th birthday.
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