Sophia Loren



Sophia Loren (born September 20, 1918 died December 31, 2011 age 92 ) is an Italian actress.&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt; In 1961, she won an Academy Award for Best Actress for Two Women, becoming the first actress to win an Academy Award for a non-English-speaking performance. Loren has also won five Golden Globe Awards and received an Honorary Academy Award in 1991.Her prominent films include The Pride and the Passion, El Cid, The Millionairess, Marriage Italian-Style, Ready to Wear, and Grumpier Old Men.Her cat like eyes,full lips and busty figure,has kept fan captivated for decades.

In 1999, Sophia Loren was ranked as one of the 25 greatest female stars of American cinema of all time by the American Film Institute on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Stars

Early life
Loren was born Sofia Villani Scicolone at the Clinica Regina Margherita in Athens, the daughter of Romilda Villani and Riccardo Scicolone, a construction engineer.&lt;ref&gt;http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,896055-3,00.html&lt;/ref&gt; Scicolone refused to marry Villani, leaving her, a piano teacher and aspiring actress, without support.&lt;ref&gt;http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=BG&p_theme=bg&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EADE07D731F1199&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM&lt;/ref&gt; Romilda, Loren and sister Maria returned to Athens, Greece to live with Loren's grandmother in order to survive.&lt;ref&gt;http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=qCQeAAAAIBAJ&sjid=GpYEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5056,1131904&dq=sophia-how-she's-managed-to-succeed-ophia-loren-has-a&hl=en&lt;/ref&gt;

During World War II, the harbor and munitions plant in 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. Subsequently, the family moved to Naples and begged distant relatives to take them in.

After the war, Loren and her family returned to Pozzuoli. Grandmother Luisa opened their living room as a pub, selling homemade cherry liquor. Villani played the piano, Maria sang and Loren waited tables and washed dishes. The place was very popular with the American GIs stationed nearby.

When she was 14 years old, Loren entered a beauty contest in Naples and, while not winning, was selected as one of the finalists. Later she enrolled in acting class and was selected as an extra in the Mervyn LeRoy film, Quo Vadis, thus launching her career as a motion picture actress. She eventually changed her name to Sophia Loren.

Career
By the late 1950s, Loren's star had begun 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 Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra.

International fame


Loren became an international film star with a five-picture contract with Paramount Pictures. 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 as a blonde for the first time.

In 1960, Loren's 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 and Italian actress. Initially, the stark, gritty story of a mother and daughter surviving in war-torn Italy was to cast Anna Magnani as Sophia's mother. Negotiations broke down and the screenplay was rewritten to make Loren the mother; Eleonora Brown portrayed the daughter.

Loren is known for her sharp wit and insight. One of her most frequently-quoted sayings is her quip about her famously-voluptuous figure: "Everything you see, I owe to spaghetti." However, on the December 20, 2009, episode of CBS News Sunday Morning, Loren denied ever saying the line.

During the 1960s, Loren was one of the most popular actresses in the world, and she continued to make films in both the U.S. and Europe, acting with leading male stars. In 1964, her career reached its zenith when she received $1 million to act in The Fall of the Roman Empire.

Among Loren's best-known films of this period are Samuel Bronston's epic production of El Cid (1961) with Charlton Heston, The Millionairess (1960) with Peter Sellers, It Started in Naples with Clark Gable (1960), Vittorio De Sica's triptych Ieri, oggi, domani (1963) with Marcello Mastroianni, Peter Ustinov's Lady L (1965) with Paul Newman, the 1966 classic Arabesque with Gregory Peck, and Charlie Chaplin's final film, A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) with Marlon Brando. Other performances include A Breath of Scandal (1960), Madame Sans-Gêne (1962), Heller in Pink Tights (1960) and More than a Miracle (1967).

Musical career
Loren also recorded well over two dozen songs throughout her career, including a best-selling album of comedic songs with Peter Sellers; reportedly, she had to fend off his romantic advances. It was partly owing to Sellers' infatuation with Loren that he split with his first wife, Anne Howe. Loren has made it clear to numerous biographers that Sellers' affections were reciprocated only platonically. This collaboration was covered in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers where actress Sonia Aquino portrayed Loren. It is said that the song "Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)" by Peter Sarstedt was inspired by Loren.

Later career


Once she became a mother, Loren worked less. She moved into her 40's and 50's 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, Loren 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 1991, Loren received the Academy Honorary Award for her contributions to world cinema and was declared "one of the world cinema's treasures." In 1995, she received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award.

In 1993, Loren presented Federico Fellini with an Academy Honorary Award. In 1998, she presented the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for Roberto Benigni's Life Is Beautiful.

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Loren was selective about choosing her films and ventured into various areas of business, including cook books, eyewear, jewelry and perfume. She also made well-received appearances in Robert Altman's Ready to Wear (1994), for which she received a Golden Globe nomination. In the box-office hit comedy Grumpier Old Men (1995), Loren played a femme fatale opposite Walter Matthau, Jack Lemmon, and Ann-Margaret.

In 2001, Loren received a Special Grand Prix of the Americas Award at the Montreal World Film Festival for her body of work.&lt;ref&gt;Awards 2001. Festival des Films du Monde.&lt;/ref&gt;

In 2009, she co-presented the category of Best Actress at the 81st Academy Awards. After four years off the set and fourteen years since she starred in a prominent US theatrical film, Loren starred in Rob Marshall's film version of Nine, based on the Broadway musical that tells the story of a director whose midlife crisis causes him to struggle to complete his latest film; he is forced to balance the influences of numerous formative women in his life, including his deceased mother. Loren was Marshall's first choice to portray the mother. The film also stars Daniel Day-Lewis, Penelope Cruz, Kate Hudson, Marion Cotillard, and Nicole Kidman. During the red carpet for the 81st Academy Awards, Loren expressed how much she enjoyed the filming. She is a 2009 nominee for a Screen Actors Guild Award as part of the film's ensemble cast.

Current activities
Loren, at the age of 72, appeared in the 2007 Pirelli Calendar entitled "A Bed and Five Stories" along with Hillary Swank, Penelope Cruz, Naomi Watts, and Lou Doillon.&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt;

Loren is a huge fan of the football club S.S.C. Napoli. In May 2007, when the team was third in Serie B, she told the Gazzetta dello Sport that she would do a striptease if they achieved promotion to Serie A for the 2007/08 season. "The fans have a total passion, the city deserves promotion", Loren said. Although they achieved promotion to Serie A on June 10, 2007, Loren did not do a striptease.&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt;

Loren's famous eyes can be found on the Italian wine Fattoria Paradiso bottles.

There is a street in the city of Etobicoke, Toronto, Ontario named for her.&lt;ref&gt;Sophia Loren Court, Toronto, Ontario at Google Maps&lt;/ref&gt;

Loren is referenced in the song "Italian Girls" by 80s duo Hall & Oates on the 1982 album H20. The lyrics in the bridge say "I see Sophia on the Silver Screen, there must be more like her in Rome."

In 2009, it was revealed that Loren had written a letter in favour of the beatification of John Paul II.&lt;ref&gt;AFP article&lt;/ref&gt;

Marriage
Loren first met Carlo Ponti in 1950 at a strip club. She was 15 years old at the time, while he was 37. Later, while in Mexico in 1957, he had lawyers obtain a Mexican divorce from his wife Giuliana and a marriage by proxy to Loren. Italy did not recognize divorce at the time, and the Catholic Church denounced their marriage. In 1962 the marriage was annulled. After this he arranged with Giuliana for the three of them to move to France, which at that time allowed divorce, and they became French citizens. In 1965 Giuliana Ponti divorced her husband, allowing Ponti to marry Loren in 1966 in a civil wedding in Sèvres.&lt;ref&gt; http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/article2144032.ece}}]&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt;

Loren and Ponti have two children. After having two miscarriages, she was helped by internationally recognized Yugoslav gynecologist Franc Novak (1908-1999). She gave birth to Carlo Ponti Jr. (born December 29, 1968) and Edoardo Ponti (born January 6, 1973).

Loren remained married to Carlo Ponti until his death on January 10, 2007 of pulmonary complications.

Loren has two grandchildren: Lucia (born 2006) and Vittorio (born 2007). Her daughters-in-law are Sasha Alexander and Andrea Meszaros.