Sophia Loren is the epitome of a Hollywood movie star, connected with beauty and an elegant way of life.
Her road to stardom was not simple; she was born into a poor family, and even when she did gain the spotlight, her appearance was questioned.
Today, we regard her as the most beautiful woman ever to grace our screens, and she is still breathtaking at 88.
It’s challenging to think that the lady who inspired music, rejected a marriage proposal from Cary Grant, and became the first actor to win an Oscar for a foreign-language film had such a humble beginning.
Her mother, Sofia Villani Scicolone, was a piano teacher and actress whose attractive looks drew the attention of Hollywood. Sophia’s lovely mother once won a Greta Garbi lookalike competition, but her conservative family wouldn’t let her pursue a career in show business.
Instead, the mother would instruct her daughter and assist Sophia in her future film career.
Sophia grew raised without her father’s support, who was also the father of her younger sister Maria, but he refused to marry their mother and had no involvement in family life.
“I only saw my father six times in my life,” she told People. “He was a great source of pain and humiliation for my mother, whom he seduced and abandoned, for my younger sister, Maria, who suffered terribly because he would not give her his name, and for myself.”
Growing up in a single-parent family was financially challenging.
“She was raised in severe poverty, sharing a bedroom with eight other people at her grandparents’ home and living with other relatives,” says Direct Expose. “Conditions eventually deteriorated to the point… where Loren’s mother would occasionally take water from the car radiator to feed her daughters.”
Sophia survived World War II, during which she was knocked on the ground and hit by shrapnel, leaving her with a scar on her chin.
“I was a little girl, but the sound and experiences of the war never leave you,” she commented once.
She had mites and lice and was ridiculed at school for being thin.
But she grew into the successful beauty we know today. She attended the National Film School in Italy after finishing as a finalist in the Miss Italia 1950 beauty competition.
Her appearance was still critiqued, and she was informed her nose wasn’t right and she needed to lose weight.
“It was an unusual nose, so I never changed it.” When you are incredibly young, you must sometimes wait for nature to shape your face or body. “People gradually realized that the nose was much nicer than they thought,” she told the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Her big break occurred when she was 19 when she played an Ethiopian slave in Aida, earning her critical praise.
Four years later, she co-starred in The Pride and the Passion with Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra, and her role as a mother trying to provide for her daughter in war-torn Rome in Two Women garnered her an Oscar.
Loren won five special Golden Globes, a Grammy Award, an Honorary Academy Award, and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievements, to name a few.
Despite allegations of adultery and bigamy in her personal life, she remained married to Italian film producer Carlo Ponti for 50 years until he died in 2007.
Sophia was only 16 years old when they first met. Carlo signed her to a contract, became her mentor, and ensured Sophia’s success in Italy before she turned 25.
“We both fell in love at first sight.” We met when I was 16, and he was on the jury of a beauty pageant in Rome. “He saw me sitting at a table with friends and sent me a note inviting me to enter the competition,” she explained.
Sophia and Carlo married in 1957, but Carlo’s divorce from a previous marriage was not recognized in Italy, and they were charged with bigamy. Carlo was 21 years her senior, and when they first married, he was still married to his first wife.
Sophias and Carlo’s marriage was thus canceled in 1962. The pair resolved the issue by becoming French citizens and officially marrying.
They eventually had two sons, Carol Jr., an orchestra conductor, and Eduardo, a filmmaker. Sophia now has four grandkids.
Sophia’s love life has been in the news several times, including when she turned down a marriage proposal from Cary Grant.
She never focused on her magnificent beauty, preferring to be true to herself and create a stable home life for her children that she had never had.
“My character is my best feature,” she told the Telegraph publication. “I was nobody, a little girl, unhappy, in desperation because of the life I was living with my family and no father.”
We still don’t know much about this screen goddess since she burns her personal diaries every year, but we do know she is loyal to her family and her career and is still acting at the age of 88.
Sophia Loren had her first starring appearance in nearly a decade in 2020. Sophia plays Madam Rosa, a Holocaust survivor and former sex worker, in the American-Italian drama film The Life Ahead, directed by her son Edoardo Ponti.
“I [tapped] into my own experiences during the war and [found] Madame Rosa’s truth and honesty by uncovering my own,” Sophia explained.
Today, the Oscar-winning Italian actress is also a businesswoman. She has two restaurants in Italy, one in Florence and one in Milano. Sophia was present when the latter opened its doors in 2022.
“In my life, I have had many passions, one of which is unquestionably food,” Loren says on the restaurant’s website.
“No director has ever managed to put me on a diet, and I’ve never sacrificed a good plate of pasta for the sake of my figure.”
Despite her difficult childhood and setbacks, this movie’s beauty has made a successful career.
