Italian movie legend Gina Lollobrigida, who rose to worldwide stardom in the course of the 1950s and was dubbed “probably the most lovely lady on the planet” after the title of one in every of her movies, died in Rome on Monday, her agent mentioned. She was 95.
The agent, Paola Comin, didn’t present particulars. However Lollobrigida underwent surgical procedure in September to restore a femur that was damaged in a fall. She returned house and mentioned that she had shortly resumed strolling.
A drawn portrait of the diva appeared on the 1954 cowl of Time journal, which in contrast her to a “goddess” in an article about Italian cinema. Greater than half a century later, Lollobrigida nonetheless commanded her consideration along with her curly brown hair and statuesque determine, preferring to be known as an actress relatively than the gender-neutral time period actor.
“Lollo,” as Italians affectionately nicknamed her, started making movies in Italy simply after the tip of World Battle II, when the nation started selling a stereotypical idea of the Mediterranean magnificence as busty and brunette on the massive display.
Along with The Most Lovely Lady within the World in 1955, profession highlights included the Golden Globe-winning Come September with Rock Hudson, Trapeze, Beat the Satan, a 1953 John Huston movie starring Humphrey Bogart and Jennifer Jones, and Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell, who received the Lollobrigida Award for Greatest Italian Cinema, a David di Donatello, for Greatest Actress in 1969.
In Italy, he labored with a few of the nation’s main conductors after the conflict, together with Mario Monicelli, Luigi Comencini, Pietro Germi, and Vittorio De Sica. Two of his hottest movies at house have been Comencini’s Pane Amore e Fantasia (Bread, Love and Goals) in 1953, and the sequel a yr later, Pane Amore e Gelosia (Bread, Love and Jealousy). The male complement to him was Vittorio Gassman, one in every of Italy’s main males on display.
Lollobrigida was additionally an achieved sculptor, painter, and photographer, ultimately primarily abandoning movie for tremendous artwork. Along with her digital camera, she traveled the world from what was then the Soviet Union to Australia. In 1974, Fidel Castro welcomed her as a visitor in Cuba for 12 days whereas she labored on a photographic report.
Lollobrigida was born on July four, 1927 in Subiaco, a picturesque mountain city close to Rome, the place her father was a cabinetmaker. Lollobrigida started her profession in magnificence pageants, posing for journal covers and cameo appearances in minor movies. Producer Mario Costa took her from the streets of Rome to look on the massive display.
Eccentric mogul Howard Hughes ultimately introduced Lollobrigida to the US, the place she carried out with a few of Hollywood’s greatest males of the 1950s and ’60s, together with Frank Sinatra, Sean Connery, Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, and Yul Brynner.
Through the years, her co-stars additionally included Europe’s most good-looking male stars of the day, together with Louis Jourdan, Fernando Rey, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Alec Guinness. Though Lollobrigida did play some dramatic roles, her intercourse image picture outlined her profession, and her hottest characters have been present in light-hearted comedies just like the Bread, Love trilogy.
With lush lashes and thick brown curls framing her face, Lollobrigida pioneered a trendy coiffure within the 1950s generally known as the “poodle reduce.” Gossip columnists commented on alleged rivalries between her and Sophia Loren, one other Italian film star celebrated for her bodily magnificence.
In center age, Lollobrigida’s affair with a person 34 years her junior, Javier Rigau, from Barcelona, Spain, stored the gossip pages abuzz for years. “I’ve all the time had a tender spot for younger males as a result of they’re beneficiant and don’t have any complexes,” the actress advised Spain’s Hola journal. After greater than 20 years of relationship, in 2006 Lollabrigida, then 79, introduced that she would marry Rigau, however the marriage ceremony by no means befell.
Her first marriage, to Milko Skofic, a Yugoslavian-born physician, resulted in divorce in 1971. Within the final years of her life, Lollobrigida’s title appeared extra steadily in articles by journalists masking the courts of Rome, not within the glamorous scene, as authorized battles have been raged over whether or not he had the psychological competence to are inclined to his funds.
On her web site, Lollobrigida recalled how her household misplaced their house throughout World Battle II bombing and went to stay in Rome. She studied sculpture and portray at a highschool devoted to the humanities, whereas her two sisters labored as film ushers so she may proceed her research.