Sophia Loren · Lablypedia

Encouraged to enroll in acting lessons after entering a beauty pageant, Loren began her film career at age 16 in 1950. She appeared in several bit parts and minor roles in the early part of the decade, until her five-picture contract with Paramount in 1956 launched her international career. Her film appearances around this time include The Pride and the Passion, Houseboat, and It Started in Naples. During the 1950s, she starred in films as a sexually emancipated persona and was one of the best known sex symbols of the time.

Loren's performance as Cesira in the film Two Women (1960), directed by Vittorio De Sica, won her the Academy Award for Best Actress, making her the first performer to ever win an Oscar for a non-English-language performance. She holds the record for having earned seven 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); A Special Day (1977) and The Life Ahead (2020). Loren has won five special Golden Globes (including the Cecil B. DeMille Award), a BAFTA Award, a Laurel Award, a Grammy Award, the Volpi Cup for Best Actress 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. In 1999, the American Film Institute (AFI) named her one of the greatest stars of American film history; as of 2026, she is the last remaining living entrant from the AFI lists. She was appointed Knight of the Legion of Honour in France in July 1991, and Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (OMRI) in June 1996.

At the start of the 1980s, Loren chose to make rarer film appearances. Since then, she has appeared in films such as Prêt-à-porter (1994), Grumpier Old Men (1995), Nine (2009), and The Life Ahead (2020).

Early life

Family and childhood

Sofia Costanza Brigida Villani Scicolone was born on September 20, 1934, in the Clinica Regina Margherita in Rome, the daughter of Romilda Villani (1910–1991) and Riccardo Scicolone Murillo (1907–1976). Her mother was a piano teacher and aspiring actress, and her father a failed engineer who worked temporarily for the national railway Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane. Loren claimed in her autobiography that he was of noble descent, by virtue of which she is entitled to call herself "Viscountess of Pozzuoli, Lady of Caserta, a title given by the House of Hohenstaufen, Marchioness of Licata Scicolone Murillo".

Loren's father refused to marry her mother, leaving her without financial support. Loren met her father three times, at age five, age seventeen and in 1976 at his deathbed, stating that she forgave him but had never forgotten his abandonment of her mother. Loren's parents had another child together, her sister Maria, in 1938. Scicolone did not want to formally recognise Maria as his daughter. When Loren became successful, she paid her father in order to have her sister Maria take the Scicolone last name. Loren has two younger paternal half-brothers, Giuliano and Giuseppe. Romilda, Sofia, and Maria lived with Loren's grandmother in Pozzuoli, near Naples.

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 played the piano, Maria sang, and Loren waited on tables and washed dishes. The place was popular with the American GIs stationed nearby.

Pageantry

Sofia participated in her first beauty pageant at the age of 15. "The Queen of the Sea" contest, organized by the newspaper Corriere di Napoli was held in Naples, on 2 October 1949. She had travelled with her mother via train from Pozzuoli while wearing her pageant dress made by her grandmother out of taffeta curtains. She was one of 12 girls to win a consolation prize as "princesses". The princesses along with the queen were paraded through the city streets in a carriage. The winnings included 23,000 lire and a train ticket to Rome. Later, the train ticket would facilitate her and her mother's move to Rome in search of work at Cinecittà.

Also at age 15, Loren (as Sofia Lazzaro) entered the Miss Italia 1950 beauty pageant and was assigned as Candidate No. 2, being one of the four contestants representing the Lazio region. She was selected as one of the last three finalists and won the title of Miss Elegance 1950, while Liliana Cardinale won the title of Miss Cinema and Anna Maria Bugliari won the grand title of Miss Italia. She returned in 2001 as president of the jury for the 61st edition of the pageant. In 2010, Loren crowned the 71st Miss Italia pageant winner.

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Career

Early roles

Sofia was placed in a Neapolitan acting school by her mother who earned the money by teaching piano lessons. It was through the school's instructor, Pino Serpe, that Sophia obtained her first film roles. These were small, uncredited parts in films such as Hearts at Sea (1950) and The Vow (1950). Sophia and her mother relocated to Rome after learning that MGM was filming the epic film Quo Vadis there and were looking for extras.

Sofia Lazzaro enrolled in the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, the national film school of Italy and appeared as an uncredited extra in Mervyn LeRoy's 1951 film Quo Vadis, when she was 16 years old. She was noticed by Michał Waszyński, who promoted her and helped her get her first significant role. That same year, Loren appeared in the Italian film Era lui... sì! sì!, in which she played an odalisque, and was credited as Sofia Lazzaro. In the early part of the decade, she played bit parts and had minor roles in several films, including La Favorita (1952).

Carlo Ponti changed her name and public image to appeal to a wider audience as Sophia Loren, being a twist on the name of the Swedish actress Märta Torén and suggested by Goffredo Lombardo. Her first starring role was in Aida (1953), for which she received critical acclaim.

After playing the lead role in Two Nights with Cleopatra (1953), her breakthrough role was in The Gold of Naples (1954), directed by Vittorio De Sica. Too Bad She's Bad, also released in 1954, and La Bella Mugnaia (1955) became the first of many films in which Loren co-starred with Marcello Mastroianni. Over the next three years, she acted in many films, including Scandal in Sorrento, Lucky to Be a Woman, Boy on a Dolphin, Legend of the Lost and The Pride and the Passion (1957), the latter film a Napoleonic era war-epic set in Spain starring Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra.

International stardom

Loren became an international film star following her five-picture contract with Paramount Pictures in 1958. Among her films at this time were 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 starred in Vittorio De Sica's Two Women, a stark, gritty story of a mother who is trying to protect her 12-year-old daughter in war-torn Italy. The two end up gang-raped inside a church as they travel back to their home city following cessation of bombings there. Originally cast as the daughter, Loren fought against type and was eventually cast as the mother (actress Eleonora Brown would portray the daughter).

Loren's performance earned her many awards, including the Cannes Film Festival's best performance prize, and an Academy Award for Best Actress, the first major Academy Award for a non-English-language performance or to an Italian actress. She won 22 international awards for Two Women. The film was extremely well received by critics and a huge commercial success. Though proud of this accomplishment, Loren did not show up to this award, citing fear of fainting at the award ceremony. Nevertheless, Cary Grant telephoned her in Rome the next day to inform her of the Oscar award.

During the 1960s, Loren was one of the most popular actresses in the world, and continued to make films in the United States and Europe, starring with prominent leading men. In 1961 and 1964, her career reached its pinnacle when she received $1 million to appear in El Cid and The Fall of the Roman Empire. In 1965, she received a second Academy Award nomination for her performance in Marriage Italian-Style opposite Marcello Mastroianni.

Among Loren's best-known films of this period are Samuel Bronston's epic production of El Cid with Charlton Heston, The Millionairess (1960) with Peter Sellers, It Started in Naples (1960) with Clark Gable, Vittorio De Sica's triptych Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963) with Marcello Mastroianni, Peter Ustinov's Lady L (1965) with Paul Newman, Arabesque (1966) with Gregory Peck, and Charlie Chaplin's final film, A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) with Marlon Brando.

Loren received four Golden Globe Awards between 1964 and 1977 as "World Film Favorite – Female".

Continued success

Loren appeared in fewer movies after becoming a mother in 1968. During the next decade, most of her roles were in Italian features. During the 1970s, she was paired with Richard Burton in the last De Sica-directed film, The Voyage (1974), and a remake of the film Brief Encounter (1974). The film had its premiere on US television on 12 November 1974 as part of the Hallmark Hall of Fame series on NBC. In 1976, she starred in The Cassandra Crossing. It fared extremely well internationally, and was a respectable box office success in the US market. She co-starred with Marcello Mastroianni again in Ettore Scola's A Special Day (1977). This movie was nominated for 11 international awards such as two Oscars (best actor in leading role, best foreign picture). It won a Golden Globe Award and a César Award for best foreign movie. Loren's performance was awarded with a David di Donatello Award, the seventh in her career. The movie was extremely well received by American reviewers. Following this success, Loren starred in an American thriller Brass Target. This movie received mixed reviews, although it was moderately successful in the United States and internationally. In 1978, she won her fourth Golden Globe for "world film favorite". Other movies of this decade were Academy Award nominee Sunflower (1970), which was a critical success, and Arthur Hiller's Man of La Mancha (1972), which was a critical and commercial failure despite being nominated for several awards, including two Golden Globes. Peter O'Toole and James Coco were nominated for two NBR awards, in addition the NBR listed Man of La Mancha in its best ten pictures of 1972 list. Loren headlined the action thriller Firepower (1979) co-starring James Coburn and O. J. Simpson, whom she had previously worked with on The Cassandra Crossing.

In 1980, after the international success of the biography Sophia Loren: Living and Loving, Her Own Story by A. E. Hotchner, Loren portrayed herself and her mother in a made-for-television biographical film adaptation of her autobiography, Sophia Loren: Her Own Story. Ritza Brown and Chiara Ferrari each portrayed the younger Loren. In 1981, she became the first female celebrity to launch her own perfume, 'Sophia', and a brand of eyewear soon followed.

Loren acted infrequently during the 1980s, preferring to devote more time to raising her sons. In 1981 she turned down the role of Alexis Carrington in the television series Dynasty. Although she was set to star in 13 episodes of CBS's Falcon Crest in 1984 as Angela Channing's half-sister Francesca Gioberti, negotiations fell through at the last moment and the role went to Gina Lollobrigida instead. She played the title role in the 1984 TV movie Aurora, in which she acted alongside her 11-year-old real-life son Edoardo Ponti.

Loren has recorded more than 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. Partly owing to Sellers's infatuation with Loren, he split with his first wife, Anne Howe. Loren has made it clear to numerous biographers that Sellers's affections were reciprocated only platonically. This collaboration was covered in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers where actress Sonia Aquino portrayed Loren. The song "Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)?" by Peter Sarstedt was said to have been inspired by Loren.

Later career

In 1991, Loren received an Academy Honorary Award, which described her as "One of the genuine treasures of world cinema who, in a career rich with memorable performances, has added permanent luster to our art form." In 1995, she received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award, a similar honorary award, bestowed by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, for outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment.

Loren presented Federico Fellini with his honorary Oscar in April 1993. In 2009, Loren stated on Larry King Live that Fellini had planned to direct her in a film shortly before his death in 1993. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Loren was selective about choosing her films and ventured into various areas of business, including cookbooks, eyewear, jewelry, and perfume. She received a Golden Globe nomination for her performance in Robert Altman's film Ready to Wear (1994), co-starring Julia Roberts.

In 1994, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars was dedicated to her.

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. At the 20th Moscow International Film Festival in 1997, she was awarded an Honorable Prize for contribution to cinema. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Loren among the greatest female stars of American film history. In 2001, Loren received a Special Grand Prix of the Americas Award at the Montreal World Film Festival for her body of work. 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. The film also stars Daniel Day-Lewis, Penélope Cruz, Kate Hudson, Marion Cotillard, and Nicole Kidman. As a part of the cast, she received her first nomination for a Screen Actors Guild Award.

In 2010, Loren played her own mother in a two-part Italian television miniseries about her early life, directed by Vittorio Sindoni with Margareth Madè as Loren, 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 short-film 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 younger 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 theatrical film since Nine. She returned to feature-length film, as Holocaust survivor Madame Rosa, in Ponti's 2020 feature film The Life Ahead. In 2021 she received AARP Best Actress and AWFJ Grand Dame awards for her role. After turning 90 in September 2024, despite having been inactive since the release of The Life Ahead, Loren dismissed rumors about her retirement and expressed her hopes to star in new productions.

On 16 November 2017, Loren received a star at Almeria Walk of Fame in Spain for her work on White Sister. She received the Almería Tierra de Cine award.

Personal life

Loren is a Roman Catholic. Since 2006, her primary residence has been in Geneva, Switzerland. Loren's real estate portfolio has included a ranch in Hidden Valley, California, an apartment in the Hampshire House building in Manhattan, a condo on Williams Island in South Florida, and a villa in Rome.

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 (then aged 72) told the Gazzetta dello Sport that she would do a striptease if the team won. She had recently posed for the 2007 Pirelli Calendar.

In February 2021, Loren was the guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs and chose a pizza oven as her luxury item. Her musical choices included Cole Porter's "I've Got You Under My Skin" as sung by Ella Fitzgerald, and Debussy's "Clair de lune" as played by Tamás Vásáry. She revealed that fellow actor Richard Burton was furious with her for cheating at Scrabble.

On 24 September 2023, Loren received emergency surgery following fractures to her hip and femur sustained from a fall at her home in Switzerland.

Marriage and family

Loren first met Carlo Ponti in 1950, when she was 15 and he was 37, and they soon began an affair. Since divorce was not permitted in Italian law at the time, Ponti was not legally divorced from his wife, Giuliana Fiastri, when Loren married him by proxy (two male lawyers stood in for them) in Mexico on 17 September 1957. The couple had their marriage annulled in 1962 to escape bigamy charges, but continued to live together. In 1965, they became French citizens after their application was approved by then French Prime Minister Georges Pompidou. Ponti then obtained a divorce from Giuliana in France, allowing him to marry Loren on 9 April 1966. The marriage lasted until Ponti's death on 10 January 2007 from pulmonary complications, aged 94.

The couple had two sons, Carlo Ponti Jr., born on 29 December 1968, and Edoardo Ponti, born on 6 January 1973. Loren's daughters-in-law are Sasha Alexander and Andrea Meszaros. Loren has four grandchildren and is one of Drew Barrymore's godparents, along with Anna Strasberg and Steven Spielberg.

In 1962, Loren's sister Maria married the youngest son of Benito Mussolini, Romano, with whom she had two daughters, Alessandra, a former MP and MEP, and Elisabetta.

Affair with Cary Grant

Loren and Cary Grant co-starred in Houseboat (1958). Grant's wife Betsy Drake wrote the original script, and Grant originally intended that Drake 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 asked not to 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 decided to marry Carlo Ponti instead.

Legal issues and lawsuits

In 1982, while in Italy, Loren made headlines after serving 17 days in prison on tax evasion charges. Loren said her accountant had made a mistake on her tax return. The matter did not hamper her popularity or career. In 2013, the Supreme Court of Italy cleared her of the charges in a separate decades-long dispute over the tax she should have paid on her 1974 earnings.

In September 1999, Loren filed a lawsuit against 79 adult websites for posting altered nude photos of her on the internet.

Recognitions

Awards

Box office rating

In The Motion Picture Herald, both British and American exhibitors voted for Loren within the Top Ten Money Making Stars Poll:

1960 – most popular actress (3rd most popular star in UK)
1961 – 2nd most popular actress (2nd most popular star in UK)
1962 – 3rd most popular actress (7th most popular star in UK)
1964 – most popular actress in UK, 24th most popular star in America
1965 – 4th most popular star in UK
1966 – 14th most popular star in America

Honours

Knight of the Legion of Honour – France (1991)
Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic – Italy (1996)

Selected discography

Singles

1955 – "Mambo Bacan" (from La Fille du Fleuve) / "Nyves" (RCA 18.350 10" 78 rpm)
1956 – "Che m'e 'mparato a fà" / "I wanna a guy" (RCA, A25V-0473, 10" 78 rpm)
1957 – "S'agapò" / "Adoro te" (with Paola Orlandi) (RCA, A25V 0585, 10" 78 rpm)
1958 – "Bing! Bang! Bong!" (from Houseboat) / "Almost in Your Arms" (Philips PB 857 10" 78 rpm)
1960 – "Goodness Gracious Me" / "Grandpa's Grave" (with Peter Sellers) (Parlophone, 45-R.4702 7" 45 rpm)
1961 – "Zoo Be Zoo Be Zoo" / "Bangers and Mash" (with Peter Sellers) (Parlophone 45-R.4724 7" 45 rpm)

Albums

1958 – Houseboat (Philips – BBL 7292) – With George Duning and Cary Grant
1960 – Escandalos Imperiales (Heliodor – 610 800) – With Maurice Chevalier
1960 – Peter and Sophia (Parlophone – PCSM 3012, LP) – with Peter Sellers
1963 – Poesie di Salvatore Di Giacomo (CAM, LP)
1972 – Man of La Mancha (United Artists Records, LP) with Peter O'Toole, James Coco, Mitch Leigh, Joe Darion

Compilations

1992 – Le canzoni di Sophia Loren (CGD, 2xCD)
2006 – Secrets of Rome (Traditional Line, CD)
2009 – Τι Είναι Αυτό Που Το Λένε Αγάπη – Το Παιδί Και Το Δελφίνι (it:Δίφωνο, CD)

Russian National Orchestra

Prokofiev – Peter and the Wolf, Jean-Pascal Beintus – Wolf Tracks. Mikhail Gorbachev, Bill Clinton, Sophia Loren. Russian National Orchestra – Kent Nagano. Pentatone PTC 5186011 (2003)
Prokofiev – Pedro y el lobo, Jean-Pascal Beintus – Las Huellas del Lobo. Antonio Banderas, Sophia Loren, Russian National Orchestra – Kent Nagano. Pentatone PTC 5186014 (2004).