We pay tribute to the film diva through the covers of ¡HOLA!

September 29, 2024

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There was no one like her before she arrived. AND, 90 years laternone of the Hollywood actresses who throughout these decades have risen as the new queens of contemporary cinema, have managed to eclipse her. Because she is unrepeatable, one of a kind. It is the last living golden cinema diva, and on September 20, he blew out the candles for his 90th birthday. Symbol of a nation, sexual icon of the 60s, and star of Italian cinema, we honor Sofia Loren through the most iconic covers of ¡HOLA!

We pay tribute to the film diva through the covers of ¡HOLA!

Sofia Loren Italian actress 90th birthday

Sofia Loren (Sofia Constanza Brigida Villani Scicolone was her birth name), was born in 1934 in Rome, in an Italy about to enter one of the darkest times in its history. World War II would break out five years later, and Sofia lived, like many other Italian children in those years, a childhood immersed in poverty and famine. After her father abandoned them, Sofia and her mother moved to a small town on the coast of Naples, where they suffered the ups and downs of war.

His first appearance in the cinema It was with a small role as an extra in the movie What are you going for?and then he would make Italian light comedies until, with the film Aidain 1953, made the public and critics turn their eyes to her.

Sofia Loren in the movie 'More than a miracle'

And it was to be expected. Because that woman was a sight worth seeing. Almost an apparition. Half goddess, half human. A fine line between the illusory and the tangible. Because if something characterized Sofia’s beauty it was that earthly, mundane, carnal halo. A body drawn with infinite curves, a face with very marked features, a nose that was slightly more elongated than ‘aesthetically accepted’, full lips…and those eyes. Some green eyes so deep that one would fear drowning in them. It was not a perfect beauty – in fact, “she was impossible to photograph,” as one Italian photographer said early in her career – and perhaps that was what made her so incredibly attractive and beautiful. So unique. Before being baptized Sofia Loren, they called her Sofia Lazzaro, because they said that her body resurrected the dead. Who in her childhood had been a scrawny girl, as a result of the war, became a woman with a sinuous body and full of life that caused young Italians to turn around to see her passing by on the street.

Sofia became a symbol of her country. Saying Sofia was shouting “ITALY”. always felt a deep love for his countryfor their customs, and above all, for their food. And in an industry where every “extra” gram in a woman was seen as a defect, Sofia slammed the table and challenge the canons of the beauty. Who says that a beautiful woman is one without a gram of fat and thin as a pin? Thank you, Sofia, for showing us the beauty of female curves.

Without a doubt, her beauty served as a ticket to enter the world of cinema, but it was his talent which established her as a screen star. Because despite her image as a seductive and sensual woman, she was capable of playing very different roles, where it was her acting art that stood out, taking her beauty to the background.

Loren worked with great artists of Italian cinema such as Vittorio de Sica or Marcello Mastroianni (with whom he made up to 12 films in his entire career). In 1956, he made the leap to Hollywood with the film The mermaid and the dolphinand a year later, he would film Pride and passionwhere he would share the set with two of Hollywood’s most desired leading men, Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra (This film would unite three big stars on Spanish soil, since the film was filmed in our country).

The decade of the 60s was a golden age in the career of the actress. In 1961, Sofia would win her first Oscar for best actress with the Italian film two women, directed by Vittorio de Sicathus becoming the first actress to win an Oscar with a foreign language. That same year, he would also star El Cidalongside Charlton Heston, and, again, under the direction of Vittorio de Sica, he would film the Italian comedy with Marcello Mastroianni Yesterday, today and tomorrow; and in 1964, Italian-style marriageone of the great milestones of his career. From embodying a lady of the Middle Ages, a seductive diva or an authentic Italian mother, Sofia Loren had the world completely conquered, but there were still great glories in her career. In 1967 he filmed There is always a womanand in 1972, she put away her black stockings, lace bras and low-cut dresses, to put on a neat nun’s habit for the film White, red and…

She was very young when she was discovered by Carlo Ponti, Italian producer and talent scout who would end up becoming her husband and great love of her life. Ponti saw in her a hidden talent and a beauty so overwhelming and expressive that he did not hesitate to make her the next Italian diva. Despite the large age difference (He was 22 years older than her.) and Carlo’s personal situation (he was married), love quickly arose between them and they became lovers. Throughout her film career, Sofia Loren would come across iconic gallants of cinema as Cary Grant Richard Burton, Clark Gable, Gregory Peck, Marlon Brando either Paul Newman. Desired by many of them, her heart was hopelessly captivated by the Italian producer. However, his story was not easy at all. Divorce was prohibited in Italy at that time, so Loren and Ponti They married in Mexico, in 1957and this link blew up the Italian press. Adulterers, traitors of the Church,…were some of the adjectives they received in their country and for a long time they were rejected in Italy. Despite this, they remained together and their marriage lasted until 2007, when Carlo died, aged 94. Together they had two sons, Carlo Jr, and Edoardo, who have given the actress four grandchildren and infinite happiness. Now, that life full of success and glamor. Sofia Loren leads a quiet life surrounded by her loved ones, but the world has not forgotten the mythto that goddess-turned-woman who gave herself body and soul to cinema, and who, adored as she was for so many years, did not hesitate to say that “I have never considered myself a goddess, only a mother of a family.”