Sophia Loren celebrates her 90th birthday: her path to becoming a film icon

Diva, icon, national treasure. Sophia Loren has many titles and even more functions. She gave the proverbial Italian passion a face; no one was able to embody the explosive spirit of Naples like she did. Without her, Italy would be poorer by one of its most fundamental attractions. On September 20, she will be 90 years old.

Sophia Loren and her country have an unscrupulous father to thank for becoming one of the most beautiful symbols of the Italian way of life. Riccardo Scicolone (1907-1976) was an Italian civil engineer from a respected aristocratic family. In Rome, he fell in love with the piano teacher Romilda Villani (1914-1991) and fathered two daughters with her: Sofia and her younger sister Anna Maria. However, Scicolone stubbornly refused to marry his lover and also failed to support her in other ways.

Mother turns her beauty into money

Romilda Villani moved with the children to a small town near Naples, and the girls grew up in a poor environment. In her desperation, the mother tried to increase her income and market her daughter Sofia’s beauty. The girl took part in beauty contests, posed for photo novels, and worked as an extra in the Roman film studio complex Cinecittà. Until a producer discovered her – and a great career began.

Loren never really believed that her life would have turned out the same if her mother had been married and she herself had not been an illegitimate child. After all, Scicolone had allowed the children to bear his surname. In her autobiography “My Life” she writes that she was allowed to call herself Margravine Lucilla Scicolone. And the idea of ​​a Margravine taking part in beauty pageants was unthinkable in Italy in the 1940s and 1950s.

But Sofia Villani Scicolone was already a local great, a beautiful girl with a face that perfectly matched the classical ideal of beauty. In her photo novels she was called Sofia Lazaro, after Saint Lazarus, who was raised from the dead in the Bible. Such miracles were also attributed to Sofia’s beauty.

The film miracle Sophia Loren

She was only 16 when she took part in the “Miss Rome” competition in 1950 and came second. There she met the film producer Carlo Ponti (1912-2007), who was 22 years older than her (and 20 centimeters shorter). He took on the young woman’s career, promoted her and created her stage name Sophia Loren. Ponti was to become one of the most important European producers with films such as “La Strada”, “Contempt”, “Doctor Zhivago” and “Blow Up”. But above all he created the film miracle Sophia Loren.

In 1953 she had her first leading role in a film in “White Woman in Africa”. Ponti introduced her to Hollywood, and in her first film in the USA she appeared in front of the camera in “Pride and Passion” (1957) alongside Cary Grant (1904-1986) and Frank Sinatra (1915-1998). This was followed by the Hollywood comedy “Houseboat”, again with Cary Grant, then the film romance “It Started in Naples” with Clark Gable (1901-1960). Finally she got the female lead in the monumental film “El Cid” (1961) alongside Charlton Heston (1923-2008).

Sophia Loren took Hollywood by storm with her Italian temperament. She acted alongside world-famous colleagues such as John Wayne (1907-1979), Richard Burton (1925-1984), Anthony Quinn (1915-2001), Paul Newman (1925-2008), Gregory Peck (1916-2003) and Marlon Brando (1924-2004). After just five years, she had a new status: global star.

Problems with the wedding

Cary Grant, a great heartbreaker who seduced women and men alike, was also crazy about her in private. He absolutely wanted to marry her. But Sophia turned him down; she had already found the man of her life: Carlo Ponti. Looking back, she said: “I chose Carlo because he was part of my world, one of my people. To marry someone who wasn’t Italian, not from my hometown: I would have been completely lost.”

However, Ponti was already married, and divorce was not legally possible in strictly Catholic Italy until 1970. So Carlo Ponti and his wife Giuliana Fiastri divorced in Mexico. On September 13, 1957, he married Sophia Loren, but the Italian state declared the marriage invalid because it had not recognized the divorce from Mexico.

In 1966, Carlo Ponti, Giuliana Fiastri and Sophia Loren became French citizens. He divorced under French law and remarried Loren. This time the marriage was recognized. It was a very happy one and lasted until Ponti’s death in 2007.

Two sons for the film star

Her role as a mother was not the easiest either: “I had wanted children since I was 16 and didn’t have my first child until I was 34, and Eduardo when I was 38. You can imagine how long I suffered.”

After two miscarriages, her family doctor said she could no longer have children, but a Swiss doctor in Bern had a different opinion. Loren did in fact become pregnant twice more and spent eight months of each pregnancy lying down. Carlo Ponti Jr. was born in 1968, and his brother Edoardo in 1973. The older of them is now a successful conductor in the USA. Edoardo works as a director and screenwriter and has also worked with his mother.

Sophia Loren has made over 100 films and has effortlessly managed the balancing act of being a successful comedian and sex symbol on the one hand, and an expressive character actress on the other. She formed an Italian dream couple with Marcello Mastroianni (1924-1996). The two acted together in 13 films, mostly comedies such as “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow”, “Marriage Italian Style” and “Prêt-à-Porter”.

Lots of honors for Sophia Loren

Loren described her film “A Special Day” (1977), in which Mastroianni plays a gay man who is about to be deported and with whom the wife (Loren) of a Roman fascist falls in love, as her best. “A Special Day” was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Sophia Loren had already received this highest film award in 1962 for her leading role in the film drama “And Yet They Live”. In 1991 she received an honorary Oscar for her lifetime achievement.

She has received numerous awards: Oscars, Golden Globes, Bambis, etc. Sorrento, Pozzuoli, Florence and Naples have made her honorary citizen, even though she was born in Rome and has lived on Lake Geneva in Switzerland for over 30 years. She has “the body, heart and head of Naples” – said the mayor of the southern Italian city.

Despite all the pride in Sophia Loren, the Italian state has not always been gentle with her. After years of divorce and marriage, the authorities entangled her in a tax evasion affair that even landed Loren in prison for 17 days. She did this in 1982 with her usual grandeur, and the tax dispute was ultimately decided in her favor after more than 30 years.

She now lives in Switzerland

She continues to embody the Italian way of life, has published cookbooks and has repeated her famous saying about her character’s natural relationship with Italian cuisine for decades: “Everything you see, I owe to spaghetti.”

She was generous with her sex appeal – but never wasteful. Even at the age of 70, she showed off her breathtaking cleavage in “Wetten, dass..?”, but she never undressed in a film or for “Playboy”, which she commented self-ironically: “I’m not exactly tiny. When Sophia Loren is naked, that’s a lot of nakedness.”

In 2007, she announced that if the football club SSC Napoli were promoted, she would finally appear naked in public. The club actually managed to get promoted that same season, but Loren did not keep her promise. With a wink, she described the promise as a joke on a television show.

She now lives a secluded life in her Swiss villa. A year ago she fell in her house, broke her hip and had to undergo surgery. She will spend her 90th birthday with her family and celebrate like a 110 percent Italian, with “lots of love, lots of laughter, music and good food.”