Name: Sophia Loren
Natinality: Italian actress
Date born: 20 September 1934
Sophia Loren (born Sofia Villani Scicolone on September 20, 1934) is an Italian actress, naturalized French. in 1965. 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. She has won 50 international awards, including two academy awards, a grammy award and a BAFTA; she is the second most awarded actress in cinema history beside Meryl Streep. Her prominent films include El Cid, Marriage Italian-Style, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, Two Women, A Special Day, Pr?t-?-Porter, Grumpier Old Men, and (most recently) Nine.
In 1999, Sophia Loren was listed by the American Film Institute on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Stars as one of 25 American female screen legends of all time.
She is the illegitimate child of Romilda Villani and Riccardo Scicolone. Sophia grew up in the slums of Pozzuoli, just outside Naples. After insignificant parts in Luci del variet? (1950) and Quo Vadis (1951), she met movie-director Carlo Ponti, some 22 years her senior, whom she later married. Perhaps he was the father figure she never experienced as a child. In 1961, she received an Academy Award for La ciociara(1960) ("Two Women"). This beautiful lady became one of the major sex symbol of the sixties, competing with Marilyn Monroe, Brigitte Bardotand Jane Fonda. She was a very close friend of Cary Grant.
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.
Loren began her film career in 1950 with bit parts in Italian movies. After being credited as Sofia Lazzaro and Sofia Scicolone, she began using her stage name in 1952's La Favorita. Her first starring role was in Aida (1953), for which she received critical acclaim. Her breakthrough role was in The Gold of Naples (1954), directed by Vittorio De Sica. Too Bad She's Bad, also released in 1954, became the first of many films in which Loren co-starred with Marcello Mastroianni over a 40-year period. By the late 1950s, Loren's star had begun to rise in Hollywood, with films such as 1957's Boy on a Dolphin (her U.S. film debut), Legend of the Lost with John Wayne, and The Pride and the Passion in which she co-starred with Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra.
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. She made frequent appearances at awards ceremonies, and in 1993, Loren presented Federico Fellini with an Academy Honorary Award. In 1998, she presented the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Filmfor 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), receiving a Golden Globe nomination for her performance. 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. Her acting projects during this period were made in Italy, including the independent film Between Strangers (2002), directed by her son Eduoardo, and the television miniseries Lives of the Saints (2004).
In 2009, she co-presented the category of Best Actress at the 81st Academy Awards. After five 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 won a Screen Actors Guild Award as part of the film's ensemble cast.
Loren first met Carlo Ponti in 1950 at a beauty contest. 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 S?vres.
The couple has two sons: Carlo Ponti Jr. (born December 29, 1968) and Edoardo Ponti (born January 6, 1973). Earlier in their marriage, Loren had two miscarriages and sought help from gynecologist Frank Novak in order to have children.
Loren remained married to Carlo Ponti until his death on January 10, 2007 of pulmonary complications.
She has two grandchildren: Lucia (born 2006) and Vittorio (born 2007). Her daughters-in-law are Sasha Alexander and Andrea Meszaros.
She gained wider respect with her later movies like The Cassandra Crossing (1976), Una giornata particolare (1977) and Pr?t-?-Porter (1994). A lot of her movies were produced by her husband. In many of her movies, she played together with Marcello Mastroianni.
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