Sophia Loren

PROFILE

​Encouraged to enroll in acting lessons after entering a beauty pageant, Loren began her film career at age 16 in 1950. She appeared in several bit parts and minor roles in the early part of the decade, until her five-picture contract with Paramount in 1956 launched her international career. Her film appearances around this time include The Pride and the Passion, Houseboat, and It Started in Naples.

Loren's performance as Cesira in the movie Two Women (1961) directed by Vittorio De Sica earned her the Academy Award for Best Actress, making her the first actor or actress to win an Oscar for a foreign-language performance. She holds the record for having earned six David di Donatello Awards for Best Actress: Two Women; Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963); Marriage Italian Style (1964, for which she was nominated for a second Oscar); Sunflower (1970); The Voyage (1974); and A Special Day (1977). After starting a family in the early 1970s, Loren chose to make rarer film appearances.

She has won a Grammy Award, five special Golden Globes (including the Cecil B. DeMille Award), a BAFTA Award, a Laurel Award, the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival and the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival.

​In 1991, she received the Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievements.

Biography

​Sofia Villani Scicolone was born on 20 September 1934 in the Clinica Regina Margherita in Rome, Italy, her father Riccardo Scicolone, a construction engineer of noble descent (Loren wrote in her autobiography that she is entitled to call herself the Marchioness of Licata Scicolone Murillo) abandoned her mother while she was a child.

​At age 15, Loren as Sofia Lazzaro entered the Miss Italia 1950 beauty pageant. She was selected as one of the last three finalists and won the title of “Miss Elegance 1950”, while Liliana Cardinale won the title of “Miss Cinema” and Anna Maria Bugliari won the grand title of Miss Italia. That same year, Sophia Loren first met Italian producer Carlo Ponti, her future husband.  She was 16 and he was 37.
It was Ponti who later change her name and public image to appeal to a wider audience as Sophia Loren, being a twist on the name of the Swedish actress Märta Torén and suggested by Goffredo Lombardo.

Sofia Lazzaro enrolled in the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, the national film school of Italy and appeared as an uncredited extra in Mervyn LeRoy's 1951 film Quo Vadis.

In the early part of the decade, she played bit parts and had minor roles in several films, including La Favorita (1952).

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. The film La Bella Mugnaia (1955) became the first of many films in which Loren co-starred with Marcello Mastroianni. 

While filming The Pride and the Passion (1957), Sophia Loren had passionate love affair with her leading man Cary Grant who fell in love with her, but she chose to end the affair when the filming was finished and went back to Carlo Ponti.

​Sophia Loren became an international film star following her five-picture contract with Paramount Pictures in 1958. 

In 1960, she starred in Vittorio De Sica's Two Women, a stark, gritty story of a mother who is trying to protect her 12-year-old daughter in war-torn Italy. Loren's performance earned her many awards, including the Cannes Film Festival's best performance prize, and an Academy Award for Best Actress, the first major Academy Award for a non-English-language performance or to an Italian actress. She won 22 international awards for Two Women. The film was extremely well received by critics and a huge commercial success. ​

In 1962, Loren and her husband Ponti had their marriage annulled to escape bigamy charges, but continued to live together. 

In 1964, her career reached its pinnacle when she received $1 million to appear in The Fall of the Roman Empire. In 1965, she received a second Academy Award nomination for her performance in Marriage Italian-Style.

​Sophia Loren's first son Carlo Ponti Jr., was born on 29 December 1968, and she appeared in fewer movies  after becoming a mother.

During the 1970s, she was paired with Richard Burton in the last De Sica-directed film, The Voyage (1974), and a remake of the film Brief Encounter (1974). 

In 1977 She co-starred again with Marcello Mastroianni in Ettore Scola's A Special Day which was nominated for 11 international awards such as two Oscars (best actor in leading role, best foreign picture). It won a Golden Globe Award and a César Award for best foreign movie. Loren's performance was awarded with a David di Donatello Award, the seventh in her career. The movie was extremely well received by American reviewers and became a box office hit.

In 1980, after the international success of the biography Sophia Loren: Living and Loving, Her Own Story by A. Hotchner, Loren portrayed herself and her mother in a made-for-television biopic adaptation of her autobiography, Sophia Loren: Her Own Story.

​In 1981, she became the first female celebrity to launch her own perfume, 'Sophia', and a brand of eyewear soon followed.

​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.

​Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Loren was selective about choosing her films and ventured into various areas of business, including cookbooks, eyewear, jewelry, and perfume. 

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