Sophia Loren, original name Sofia Villani Scicolone, is an Italian film actress who rose above her poverty-stricken origins in postwar Naples to become universally recognized as one of Italy’s most beautiful women and its most famous movie star.
Background
Loren was born Sofia Villani Scicolone on September 20, 1934, in the Clinica Regina Margherita in Rome, Italy. She was the daughter of Romilda Villani (1910–1991) and Riccardo Scicolone, a construction engineer of noble descent (Loren wrote in her autobiography that she is entitled to call herself the Marquess of Licata Scicolone Murillo).
An illegitimate child born out of wedlock, her father Riccardo Scicolone refused to marry Villani, leaving the piano teacher and aspiring actress without financial support. Loren met with her father three times, at age five, age seventeen and in 1976 at his deathbed, citing that she forgave him, but never forgotten the abandonment of her mother. Loren's parents had another child together, her sister Maria, in 1938. Loren has two younger paternal half-brothers, Giuliano and Giuseppe. Romilda, Sofia, and Maria lived with Loren's grandmother in Pozzuoli, near Naples. Her mother's unmarried status lead to a life of poverty. Sofia was so undernourished as a child she was called Sofia Stuzzicadente or "Sofia the toothpick." By all accounts she was a thin, shy, fearful and unattractive girl.
During the Second World War, the harbour 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. After that, the family moved to Naples, where they were taken in by distant relatives. After the war, Loren and her family returned to Pozzuoli. Loren's grandmother Luisa opened a pub in their living room, selling homemade cherry liquor. Romilda Villani played the piano, Maria sang, and Loren waited on tables and washed dishes. The place was popular with the American GIs stationed nearby.
Education
Sophia took drama lessons.
Career
Italy was devastated following the end of the war. Food, jobs and money were scarce, particularly for unmarried mothers. One way women could make money was by participating in beauty pageants. Sofia, who had blossomed from 'the toothpick' into a lovely teenager entered such a pageant as a teenager and was a finalist. After this contest, Sofia's mother learned extras were needed for the film Quo Vadis. Hoping for employment, her mother packed their belongings and headed for Rome.
Sofia and her mother were hired as extras for Quo Vadis. When the film was over they were unemployed. Her mother headed back home but Sofia remained in Rome. During the early 1950s she secured work modelling for fumetti magazines. Comic-like, these magazines used actual photographs. The dialogue bubbles were called fumetti-hence the popular name.
Fumettis were quite popular throughout Italy and Sofia was in demand. She used this recognition to get bit parts in movies. Under her real name she made eight films. One director suggested she change her name to Sofia Lazzaro, which she did for three films.
Sofia's luck changed due to an encounter at a night club holding a Miss Rome contest. A stranger asked her to enter the contest but she refused. The stranger returned a second time and told Sofia one of the judges, Carlo Ponti, suggested she enter. She entered the contest and won second prize. More important she also won a screen test with Ponti, one of Italy's leading film directors.
Ponti gave her bit parts in films, believing there was something worthwhile there. Borrowing Marta Toren's last name, she changed the spelling of her first and her last name to Sophia Loren. She quickly made several films while taking drama lessons.
In 1953, producers were filming Aida with Gina Lollobrigida. The concept was to have a beautiful actress lip-synch the opera's arias which would be performed by one of Italy most famous opera singers, Renata Tebaldi. Lollobrigida backed out when she learned about the lip synching. Ponti suggested Loren as a replacement. Appearing completely painted black, Loren made the film.
Her success in Aida lead Loren to parts in nine films that year. One was Anatomy of Love which co-starred Marcello Mastroianni and Vittorio De Sica, two men she would successfully continue to work with over time. By the mid-1950s Loren had established herself as an Italian sex symbol.
In 1954 Loren again teamed up with De Sica for The Gold of Naples. De Sica considered her "the essential Italian woman." Loren had a box-office success when she teamed up with Mastroianni, in Too Bad She's Bad, with De Sica directing. In The Films of Sophia Loren, Tom Crawley noted Too Bad She's Bad was the "genesis of the most successful partnership in Italian movies." Loren explained this success, "The three of us were united in a kind of complicity that the Neapolitans always have among themselves. The same sense of humor, the same rhythms, the same philosophies of life, the same natural cynicism. All three of us did our roles instinctively."
In 1957 Loren appeared in her first English-speaking film, The Pride and the Passion, with Cary Grant. Loren's first Hollywood film was the 1958 Desire Under the Elms. During this year she worked with Peter Sellers in another film from which they recorded an album. One single from the album "Goodness Gracious Me" topped the charts in England.
Over the next years Loren worked on ten films. Two of the most important were El Cid and Two Women. El Cid with Charlton Heston is probably the largest grossing film of Loren's career. Two Women achieved greater importance in Loren's life. Loren received numerous Best Actress awards, including an Academy Award for her depiction of a mother struggling during war. This was the first Academy Award ever given to a foreign actress in a foreign language film.
The early to mid-1970s proved to be a very productive time for Loren. She made ten films and wrote a cookbook, In the Kitchen with Love, published in 1972. Unfortunately these good times were not destined to last.
Loren continued making films, but she also began other endeavors. She published Sophia: Living and Loving, her own story, written with A.E. Hotchner. She also moved into marketing when she became the first female celebrity with her own perfume. "Sophia" a combination of jasmine and roses was manufactured by Coty. In 1981 she partnered with Zyloware to market the Sophia Loren Eyewear collection. Loren was asked to be the first female grand marshall of the annual Columbus Day Parade in New York City, a parade celebrating Italian-Americans, which she did in 1984. She also published her second book, Sophia Loren on Women and Beauty.
All these activities were interrupted by legal problems. A tax court sentenced Loren to a 30 days jail term for income tax evasion on a 1966 filing. Loren promised to return once work obligations were completed. She began the sentence May 19, 1982. She served 17 days at a women's prison and was paroled early.
Since the mid-1980s Loren has continued making films, shifting towards television movies. She used her celebrity status on behalf of charity projects such as the Statue of Liberty, protecting Greco-Roman ruins and drought-relief work for Somalian refugees.
In Grumpier Old Men (1995), Loren played a femme fatale opposite Walter Matthau, Jack Lemmon, and Ann-Margret. The film was a box-office success and became Loren's biggest US hit in years. She filmed two projects in Canada during this time: the independent film Between Strangers (2002), directed by her son Edoardo and co-starring Mira Sorvino, and the television miniseries Lives of the Saints (2004).
In 2009, after five years off the set and 14 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 and only choice for the role.
In 2010, Loren played her own mother in a two-part Italian television miniseries about her early life, directed by Vittorio Sindoni, entitled La Mia Casa È Piena di Specchi (My House Is Full of Mirrors), based on the memoir by her sister Maria. In July 2013, Loren made her film comeback in an Italian adaptation of Jean Cocteau's 1930 play The Human Voice (La Voce Umana), which charts the breakdown of a woman who is left by her lover – with her youngest son, Edoardo Ponti, as director. Filming took under a month during July in various locations in Italy, including Rome and Naples. It was Loren's first significant feature film since Nine.
Counted amongst the most beautiful and talented actresses to have ruled the cinema world, Sophia Loren was a major star from the 1950s to the 1970s. The acting career of Sophia Loren has covered over 50 years and more than 100 films. Her work has earned virtually every major acting award the international film community has to offer.
Loren received numerous Best Actress awards, including an Academy Award for her depiction of a mother struggling during war. This was the first Academy Award ever given to a foreign actress in a foreign language film.
In 1991, she received a Special Academy Award, for as the Academy noted, being "one of the genuine treasures of world cinema who, in a career rich with memorable performances, has added permanent luster to our art form. " After turning 60 in 1994, Loren received a Hollywood Walk of Fame star and numerous lifetime achievement awards. Entertainment Weekly selected her as one of The 100 Greatest Movie Stars of All Time in 1996.
Loren is a Catholic, though how devoted she is to her faith depends on when you’re asking. In 1971, she described herself as a “casual Catholic.” Fast forward to 2009 and Loren was calling for the beatification of the late Pope John Paul II and sounding very devout. Beatification is one step before sainthood in the Catholic Church, and requires a five year waiting period between a potential candidate’s death and consideration for the designation. However, only four years after Pope John Paul II’s death in 2005, Loren was hoping the church could expedite the process. She just really liked him:
"I jealously keep the memory of John Paul II in my heart. It is a daily memory. I went to the tomb of John Paul II in the Vatican to pay homage to him and pray, in order to show my great admiration and devotion. I also turned to him to get his benediction for my entire family at a particular moment."
In the 70s, Loren was calling for the Catholic Church to allow priests to marry and have children. She made the point that priests were unqualified to give advice on such matters if they have no frame of reference:
"Personally, I always like to think of a priest as a human being. And he should have the problems that every human being has. He should have a family. He should really suffer, as we all do–practically, not only theoretically. In that way, he can understand other people’s problems much, much better."
As she got older, it appears Loren became more interested in her religion. However, the fact that she cared enough to comment on the workings of the church as early as the 70s is telling. It seems it was always important to her.
Politics
Loren’s long career in the spotlight has yielded very little political controversy.
She was, briefly, a lobbyist in the U.S. where she tried to convince New York Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno in 2008 to push what was nicknamed the “Dead Celebrities Bill” through the New York Congress. The bill would require that any commercial use of a deceased celebrity’s likeness, name, signature, etc. would have to be approved by their estate. It didn’t pass New York, but it did in California.
Views
She is a UN Goodwill Ambassador and wonthe NATO/ShoWest lifetime achievement award for her work with the National Alliance for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Maltreatment.
Quotations:
Loren once commented, "Sex-appeal is 50 percent what you've got and 50 percent what people think you've got."
"A woman's dress should be like a barbed-wire fence: serving its purpose without obstructing the view."
"Everything you see I owe to spaghetti."
"Nothing makes a woman more beautiful than the belief that she is beautiful."
"Beauty is how you feel inside, and it reflects in your eyes. It is not something physical."
"Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life."
"If you haven't cried, your eyes can't be beautiful."
"Sex appeal is fifty percent what you've got and fifty percent what people think you've got."
"When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child."
"Spaghetti can be eaten most successfully if you inhale it like a vacuum cleaner."
"It's a mistake to think that once you're done with school you need never learn anything new."
Personality
Sofia was so undernourished as a child she was called Sofia Stuzzicadente or "Sofia the toothpick. " By all accounts she was a thin, shy, fearful and unattractive girl. She burns her personal diary every year. The star keeps a personal diary, but burns it at the end of every year. She told ABC News’ Chris Connelly in an interview on “Good Morning America” that it’s something she likes “to keep private.”
Physical Characteristics:
In childhood she was nicknamed 'little stick', she was shy, ugly and lean as a child, and little did she know that one day she would become a sex symbol in the entire US and Europe.
Quotes from others about the person
De Sica once stated to an interviewer, "She was created differently, behaved differently, affected me differently from any woman I have known. I looked at that face, those unbelievable eyes, and I saw it all as a miracle."
Fans seemed to agree with Sam Shaw when he stated, "Whatever she does on screen is right. She can do ordinary pictures; and still she remains an international superstar, still she grows as a human being."
Interests
Sport & Clubs
Loren is an ardent 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 the team won.
Connections
Loren and Cary Grant co-starred in Houseboat (1958). Grant's wife Betsy Drake wrote the original script, and Grant originally intended that she would star with him. After he began an affair with Loren while filming The Pride and the Passion (1957), Grant arranged for Loren to take Drake's place with a rewritten script for which Drake did not receive credit. The affair ended in bitterness before The Pride and the Passion's filming ended, causing problems on the Houseboat set. Grant hoped to resume the relationship, but Loren agreed to marry Carlo Ponti, instead.
This concerned Ponti, who was Loren's agent and manager. Ponti, despite a wife and two children, was also in love with Loren. From all accounts it seemed Loren was also in love with Ponti. "What nobody could understand then and still can't is the extraordinary power of the man, " Loren once claimed in an interview.
This relationship was troublesome in Italy which did not recognize divorce. Loren found herself embroiled in a scandal, when Ponti obtained a Mexican divorce from his wife. Loren and Ponti were married by proxy in Mexico on September 17, 1957. The Vatican refused to recognize the divorce and subsequent marriage and labeled the couple public sinners. After a hearing, warrants were issued for Carlo (as a bigamist) and Loren (as a concubine).
In 1963 the Pontis were charged with public bigamy and their marriage was annulled. Hoping to resolve this problem, the Pontis moved to France where they became citizens. In 1965 the French court granted a divorce to Giuliana, Ponti's wife. On April 9, 1967 Loren remarried Ponti in a small French civil wedding.
While Loren enjoyed a successful career, she also attempted to become pregnant. She suffered two miscarriages after which she underwent a series of tests. When Loren again became pregnant her doctor ordered complete bed rest. On December 28, 1968, Hubert Leoni Carlo Ponti, Jr. (known as Cipi), was born. Loren had spent almost the entire pregnancy in bed.
Five years later on January 1, 1973, Eduardo Ponti arrived. Again several months of bed rest were ordered by her physician. Despite the lengthy confinements, Loren was overjoyed. In a Good Housekeeping interview with Heather Kirby, Loren claimed childbirth "is something women are born for, the continuation of life." During this period an Italian appellate court also dismissed all bigamy charges against Ponti.
On February 8, 1977, Italian police searched the Pontis' private home and business offices. The government believed Ponti was guilty of income tax evasion, the misuse of government subsidies, and the illegal export of Italian funds. A warrant was issued for Ponti's arrest. Loren was charged as an accomplice.
In 1979 the government tried the couple, in absentia. Ponti was found guilty and sentenced to four years in prison, and fined 22 billion lire (about 24 million dollars). Loren was acquitted. Ponti was eventually cleared of all charges in 1987.
Loren remained married to Carlo Ponti until his death on 10 January 2007 of pulmonary complications.
Father:
Riccardo Scicolone
(1907, Rome, Italy - 1976)
Mother:
Romilda Villani
Spouse:
Carlo Ponti
(11 December 1912 – 10 January 2007)
She was an Italian film producer with more than 140 productions to his credit. He was also the husband of international film star Sophia Loren.
Sister:
Anna Maria Villani Scicolone
(b. 11 May 1938)
He is the former wife of Romano Mussolini.
Son:
Carlo Ponti Jr.
(b. 29 December 1968)
He is an Italian orchestral conductor working in the United States. He is the son of late film producer Carlo Ponti Sr. and Italian movie star Sophia Loren and he is the older brother of film director Edoardo Ponti.
Son:
Edoardo Ponti
(b. 16 January 1972)
He is an Italian director. He is the son of actress Sophia Loren and producer Carlo Ponti Sr. and the brother of conductor Carlo Ponti.
