Italian actress Sophia Loren's last film appearance was in 'The Life Ahead' (2020), directed by her son Edoardo Ponti. Photo: AFP
Italian star Sophia Loren, a cinema icon with two Oscars to her name in Hollywood, celebrated her 90th birthday in Rome on Sept 20, just a few days before French actress Brigitte Bardot.
The two divas helped define film in the 20th century, becoming international cultural icons who were revered by millions around the world.
“Sophia Loren, the myth is 90 years old”, crooned the headline on Il Corriere della Sera daily.
Loren, who was born in Rome on Sept 20, 1934, blew out her 90 candles at a private party in a luxury hotel in the historic centre of the Italian capital.
After a tribute organised in a Rome movie theatre by the Cinecitta studios and the minister of culture, the actress met some 150 friends, colleagues and family members for a dinner on the hotel terrace overlooking the Baths of Diocletian.
There, she also inaugurated a suite bearing her name, according to Il Corriere della Sera.
Loren was dressed for the occasion by her friend and favourite couturier, Giorgio Armani.
Italian actress Sophia Loren poses for photographs during the International Film Festival in Cannes, on May 26, 1976. Photo: AFP
Italy’s main newspapers on Sept 20 looked back at the extraordinary, decades-long career of Loren, one of the last surviving actresses from Hollywood’s Golden Age.
During her career, she starred opposite the greatest actors of the day, from Anthony Quinn, Clark Gable and Marlon Brando to Cary Grant, John Wayne and Frank Sinatra.
La Repubblica newspaper paired her birthday with that of Bardot, who will turn 90 on Sept 28.
“Splendid 90-year-olds,” wrote the paper, saying the duo “redefined the feminine imagination of the 20th century”.
Loren’s 90th birthday was also marked by a retrospective at the Lincoln Centre in New York City.
Italy’s public broadcaster Rai has planned several reruns of her films, including a restored version of Marriage Italian Style (1964), with her favourite co-star, Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni, who died at age 72 in 1996.
Loren was nominated for Best Actress at the Academy Awards for her role as a young waif in the romantic comedy, after winning the Best Actress Oscar for war drama Two Women (1960). She received the Academy Honorary Award in 1991.
The choice of Marriage Italian Style also incorporates several key dates: the 60th anniversary of the film released in 1964, the centenary of Mastroianni’s birth on Sept 26, 1924, and the 50th anniversary of the death of the film’s Italian director Vittorio De Sica.
Widowed since the 2007 death of her husband, Italian film producer Carlo Ponti, Loren made a comeback on Italian television in 2010 in a movie about her life in which she played her own mother.
In 2014, upon turning 80, she published her memoir, Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, with the title coming from her three-part comedy anthology Yesterday, Today And Tomorrow (1963).
Her last film appearance was in The Life Ahead (2020), directed by her son Edoardo Ponti. – AFP
