Sophia Loren

In 1962, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Two Women, becoming the first actress to win an Academy Award for a non-English-speaking performance. Loren has won 50 international awards, including two Oscars, five Golden Globe Awards, a Grammy Award and a BAFTA Award; she is the second most awarded actress in cinema history beside Meryl Streep. Her other films include The Pride and the Passion (1957), Houseboat (1958), El Cid (1961), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), Man of La Mancha (1972), The Cassandra Crossing (1976), Prêt-à-Porter (1994), Grumpier Old Men (1995), and Nine (2009).

In 1999, Sophia Loren was listed by the American Film Institute on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Stars as one of 25 American female screen legends of all time. In 2002, she was honored by the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF) at its annual Anniversary Gala and was inducted into its Italian American Hall of Fame.

Loren was born in the Clinica Regina Margherita in Rome, daughter of Romilda Villani (1914–1991) and Riccardo Scicolone, a construction engineer. Scicolone refused to marry Villani, leaving her, a piano teacher and aspiring actress, without support. Loren's parents had another child together, her sister Maria, in 1938. Loren has two younger paternal half-brothers, Giuliano and Giuseppe. Romilda, Loren, and Maria lived with Loren's grandmother in Pozzuoli, near Naples, to survive.

Guido (1907-19??) her uncle, born in Pozzuoli. He had 2 daughters and 2 sons. Accountant at the Ansaldo (Officine Meccaniche) factory. Dora (1907-19??) her aunt, born in Pozzuoli. Stenographer at the Ansaldo munitions factory. Mario (1920-1998) her uncle, born in Pozzuoli. Wife: Angela. They had three dauthters. Carpenter at the Ansaldo (Officine Meccaniche) factory. He moved to Rome to act as Sophia's secretary and sometimes press agent from 1954 to 1957. He was living with her sister Dora in the same Pozzuoli house where Sophia was raised when he passed away on December 30, 1998.

Loren is a Roman Catholic. Her primary residence has been in Geneva, Switzerland, since late 2006. She owns homes in Naples and Rome and used to have a holiday house in the coastal town of Castiglione della Pescaia, Tuscany.

Loren is an ardent fan of the football club S.S.C. Napoli. In May 2007, when the team was third in Serie B, she (then aged 72) told the Gazzetta dello Sport that she would do a striptease if the team won.

Loren posed for the 2007 Pirelli Calendar.

Affair with Cary Grant

Loren and Cary Grant co-starred in Houseboat (1958). Grant's wife Betsy Drake wrote the original script, and Grant originally intended that she would star with him. After he began an affair with Loren while filming The Pride and the Passion (1957), Grant arranged for Loren to take Drake's place with a rewritten script for which Drake did not receive credit. The affair ended in bitterness before The Pride and the Passion's filming ended, causing problems on the Houseboat set. Grant hoped to resume the relationship, but Loren agreed to marry Carlo Ponti instead.

Marriage and family

Loren first met Ponti in 1950, when she was 16 and he was 37. Though Ponti had been long separated from his first wife, Giuliana, he was not legally divorced when Loren married him by proxy (two male lawyers stood in for them) in Mexico on 17 September 1957. The couple had their marriage annulled in 1962 to escape bigamy charges, but continued to live together. In 1965, they became French citizens after their application was approved by then French Prime Minister Georges Pompidou. Ponti then obtained a divorce from Giuliana in France, allowing him to marry Loren on 9 April 1966.

They had two children, Carlo Ponti Jr., born on 29 December 1968, and Edoardo Ponti, born on 6 January 1973. Loren's daughters-in-law are Sasha Alexander and Andrea Meszaros. Loren has four grandchildren. Loren remained married to Carlo Ponti until his death on 10 January 2007 from pulmonary complications.

In 1962, Loren's sister Maria married the youngest son of Benito Mussolini, Romano, with whom she had two daughters, Alessandra, a national conservative Italian politician, and Elisabetta.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_Loren

A Special Day

Italian cinema's most iconic screen couple, Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni - here cast against glamorous type - deliver the finest and most nuanced performances of their career in this rarely seen masterpiece finally presented, restored and remastered in 4K - with striking desaturated colours - as originally created by its multi-awarded director Ettore Scola. On this special day in 1938, all of fascist Rome has been mustered to a parade for Hitler visiting Mussolini. Loren's working-class housewife, Antonietta, left alone to her chores, meets the only other person left in their block, Gabriele (Mastroianni), a persecuted homosexual radio announcer. The two, who are poles apart, forge an unexpectedly close friendship that will change their perceptions of love, politics and life itself..

A Special Day trailer

BBC Radio Sophia Loren on her fairy tale life 2021 Released On: 13 Nov 2014. Available for over a year (2022), maybe longer.