Sophia Loren
Sofia Costanza Brigida Villani Scicolone, known professionally as Sophia Loren, is an Italian actress, active in her native country and the United States. With a career spanning over 70 years, she is one of the last surviving major stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema.
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, 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 ; Marriage Italian Style ; Sunflower ; The Voyage ; A Special Day and The Life Ahead. Loren has won five special Golden Globes, 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 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 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, Grumpier Old Men, Nine, and The Life Ahead.
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 and Riccardo Scicolone Murillo. 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 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.
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 and The Vow. 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 Michal Waszysnki, 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.
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, for which she received critical acclaim.
After playing the lead role in Two Nights with Cleopatra, her breakthrough role was in The Gold of Naples, directed by Vittorio De Sica. Too Bad She's Bad, also released in 1954, and La Bella Mugnaia 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, 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. 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 with Peter Sellers, It Started in Naples with Clark Gable, Vittorio De Sica's triptych Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow with Marcello Mastroianni, Peter Ustinov's Lady L with Paul Newman, Arabesque with Gregory Peck, and Charlie Chaplin's final film, A Countess from Hong Kong 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, and a remake of the film Brief Encounter. 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. This movie was nominated for 11 international awards such as two Oscars. 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, which was a critical success, and Arthur Hiller's Man of La Mancha, 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 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 ?" by Peter Sarstedt was said to have been inspired by Loren.