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Title: SOPHIA LOREN The Italian Queen Tribute View count: 561 Rating: 5.0 (2 ratings) Description: SOPHIA LOREN (born September 20, 1934) is an Italian film actress and an international sex symbol. In 1961, she won an Academy Award for Best Actress for Two Women, becoming the first actor to win an Academy Award for a non-English-speaking performance. Loren was born Sofia Villani Scicolone at the Clinica Regina Margherita in Rome on September 20, 1934, to Riccardo Scicolone and Romilda Villani. Scicolone refused to marry Villani, leaving her, a piano teacher and aspiring actress, without support. Romilda, Loren and sister Maria returned to Pozzuoli, near Naples, to live with Loren's grandmother in order to survive. 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. By the late 1950s, Loren's star had begun to rise in Hollywood, with films such as 1957's Boy on a Dolphin and The Pride and the Passion in which she co-starred with Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra. Grant, reportedly, fell so deeply in love with Loren that he ardently proposed marriage, despite her obvious loyalty to Carlo Ponti and Grant's own union with actress and writer Betsy Drake. Loren refused. Loren became an international film star with a five-picture contract with Paramount Pictures. Among her films at this time: 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 with blonde hair (a wig) for the first time. Loren attracted respect as a dramatic and comedic actress, especially in Italian projects where she could express herself more freely, although she acquired great proficiency in English. In 1960, Loren's acclaimed performance in Vittorio De Sica's Two Women earned many awards, including the Cannes, Venice and Berlin Film Festivals' best performance prizes. Her performance was also awarded an Academy Award for Best Actress, the first major Academy Award for a non-English-language performance and Latin actress. Initially, the stark, gritty story of a mother and daughter surviving in war-torn Italy was to cast Anna Magnani as Sophia's mother. Negotiations, perhaps due to billing, broke down and the screenplay was rewritten to make Loren the mother; Eleonora Brown portrayed the daughter. Belying the typical portrayal of the beautiful actress as vacuous and empty-headed, Loren was known for her sharp wit and insight. One of her most frequently-quoted sayings is her quip about her famously-voluptuous figure: "Everything you see, I owe to spaghetti." During the 1960s, Loren was one of the most popular actresses in the world, and she continued to make films in both the U.S. and Europe, acting with leading male stars. In 1964, her career reached its zenith when she received $1 million to act in The Fall of the Roman Empire. THE ITALIAN QUEEN...... Tags: sophia, loren, the, italian, queen, tribute, Author: blackpanther9000 |
