Film critic, Rex Reed, described her as the woman who 'has sung duets with Noel Coward, dined with Queen Elizabeth and shooed President Tito of Yugoslavia out of her kitchen for sticking his finger in her spaghetti sauce... She has beaten Taylor, Burton and another friend, Peter O'Toole, at both Scrabble and poker.' She has made over one hundred films, has received an Honorary Oscar for Lifetime Achievement and has been named as "one of the world's most stunning and age resistant women" by People Magazine. She has written numerous books, including Sophia: Living and Loving, Her Own Story; Women and Beauty; Eat With Me; and Sophia Loren's Recipes and Memories. Sophia Loren is one formidable lady indeed.
It would seem she was determined to come into the world and make it a little more glamorous, this woman who as a child was so thin that she earned the nickname of 'Toothpick'. Born on 20 September 1934 to an unmarried Romilda Villani, little Sophia didn't have an easy time of it. Her father, Riccardo Scicolone, repeatedly refused to marry Romilda, who struggled desperately to keep body and soul together. Romilda's landlord in Rome at some point even suggested that she abandon baby Sophia. "She' all skin and bones. Just let her die," the woman told Romilda. "No one will blame you." But Romilda was not about to give up and Sophia has always seen her difficult childhood as a blessing. She says: "The two big advantages I had at birth were to have been born wise and to have been born in poverty."
Sophia grew up in the slums of Pozzuoli, just outside Naples. Her early childhood memories are of hardship and war. "When I was a child, fear was common to my life – fear of having nothing to eat, fear of the other children taunting me at school because I was illegitimate, and particularly fear of the big bombers appearing overhead and dropping their lethal bursts from the sky." At the tender age of six, Sophia was hit by shrapnel in her chin while running to a shelter during a raid.
Sex appeal is 50% what you've got and 50% what people think you've got.
After the war, Sophia and her family opened their living room as a pub lounge for American GI's stationed nearby. Sophia washed dishes and served the soldiers, grandmother Luisa sold homemade cherry liquor, Romilda played the piano, Sophia's sister, Maria, sang. The friendly lounge soon became a popular hangout and sometimes sympathetic soldiers would even bring the family extra rations. It was Charles Diel, a soldier, who sneaked Romilda and Sophia into the army base and found a medic who was able to repair most of the scar damage on Sophia's chin.
Sophia frequented the Teatro Sachino, Pozzuoli's only theatre. She loved the films so much that she sometimes stayed to watch four showings in a row. It was here that the shy, gauche little girl felt the first stirrings of her destiny. She remembers: "When the lights went down and I was alone with Rita or Linda or Tyrone, I was suffused with the feeling that that's what I was put on earth to do – to act, to express myself, to let out whatever feelings I had inside..."
A womans dress should be like a barbed wire fence: serving its purpose without obstructing the view.
Acting seemed an improbable career choice for little Toothpick until round about her fourteenth birthday. Suddenly Sophia started to blossom, her body developing curves that caused even her gym teacher to become infatuated with the girl. He approached Romilda and asked for Sophia's hand in marriage, but his offer was summarily dismissed.
The incident was enough however to open Romilda's eyes to the possibility of creating a better future for her little Sophia. She encouraged Sophia to enter beauty pageants, a difficult task for the shy girl who tried desperately to beg out. Romilda stood firm. "You are going to enter this contest," she told Sophia, "and you are going to win." At her first pageant, Sophia was crowned one of twelve princesses, receiving a railroad ticket to Rome, several rolls of wallpaper, a tablecloth with matching napkins and three thousand lire (about $35) in prizes. Sophia later acknowledged her mother for her firm stance: "Without my mother's ambition, her drive, I doubt that on my own I would have pushed myself out of Pozzuoli and into the frightening world that was faraway Rome."
After the contest, Sophia enrolled in an acting class and later moved to Rome in order to be close to the Italian film industry. She received bit parts, but was not really considered photogenic. Some producers suggested plastic surgery, but Sophia was determined to remain true to herself. "Though poor and anxious to work, I refused to alter anything. They would take me as I looked or not at all. Eventually I profited by looking like myself and not like what was fashionable years ago with certain film technicians in Rome," she says.
She also continued to enter beauty pageants. It was at the Miss Roma contest that she caught the eye of pageant judge and well-known film producer, Carlo Ponti, to whom she has been happily married for many years now. "I knew immediately she was someone remarkable," Carlo remembers his first meeting with Sophia. "Something played off her that gave her a kind of illumination."
It was her role in Two Women that put Sophia Loren squarely on the global map of talented artists. "To prepare for the part I opened the sluices of my memory, letting the bombing raids, the nights in the tunnel, the killings, the rapes and starvation and inhumanity wash back over me. I particularly concentrated on my mother as I remembered her during the war, her fears, connivances and sacrifices, and especially the way she fiercely protected us against the scourges of the war," Sophia remembers.
Everything you see I owe to spaghetti.
This role earned her a Best Actress Academy Award. She was the first actress to receive this honour for a foreign film. In a world filled with jaded stars, Sophia's appreciation of acknowledgement is refreshing. Of her accolades she said: "If you are a professional actor who has pride in his work, then the judgement of your peers should be important to you. I treasure each and every award I have ever received – and my Oscar is in a place of honour."
When her feet are not rolling over a wooden rolling pin in front of the television (something she derives great pleasure from), they are still planted firmly on the ground. "Being beautiful can never hurt, but you have to have more. You have to sparkle, you have to be fun, you have to make your brain work if you have one," she says. And it is abundantly clear that there is much more to Sophia Loren than just a pretty face. Ask her about aging well, and she is not shy to share her secret: "There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will have truly defeated age."
When Sophia Loren is naked, that is a lot of nakedness. (Explaining why she stopped doing nude scenes)
Sophia and Carlo have two sons, Carlo Jr. (a conductor) and Eduardo (a film producer), of whom they are immensely proud. Eduardo is the producer of Between Strangers.