More Sophia Loren Bios & Profiles
The most recent Sophia Loren biography is published on the main page.
Biography #2 (for Lives of the Saints)
Loren completed the feature film Between Strangers, written and directed by her son Edoardo Ponti., marking her 100th film in a long and distinguished career. Considered one of the best-loved and most phenomenal actresses in history, she became the first actor in a foreign film to be honored with a Best Actress Academy Award for Vittorio de Sica's Two Women, in 1962. Altogether, she won 21 awards in the same year for Two Women. As one of the premier leading ladies of film, Loren received an Honorary Oscar for Lifetime Achievement in 1991; she won an Honorary Golden Berlin Bear in 1994 and a Cecil B. De Mille Golden Globe Award in 1995. In addition, Loren has received acknowledgments from all over the world, from the French Victoires to the German Gold Bear and Bambis, the Italian Donatellos and Silver Ribbon and the Japanese Samurais.Selected credits include Lina Wertmüller's Francesca e Nunziata and Michelangelo Antonioni's Destination Verna, five decades after she began her career in 1950s as an extra in Mervyn LeRoy's Quo Vadis. She subsequently starred in Aida (her voice was dubbed with that of operatic legend Renata Tebaldi's), followed by Vittorio de Sica's The Gold of Naples. In 1954, de Sica teamed Loren with Marcello Mastroianni in Too Bad She's Bad, and the three were immediately reunited in 1955 for The Miller's Wife. She went on to star opposite Marcello Mastroianni in 14 films in such hits as Marriage Italian DStyle which earned her a 1965 Oscar nomination for Best Actress; Sunflower, Lucky to be a Woman, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow; The Priest's Wife; A Special Day and Robert Altman's Ready to Wear, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination as Best Supporting Actress.
Her first English-speaking role was in The Pride and the Passion, opposite Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra (1957), which opened the door to Hollywood. As she perfected her fluency in English, Loren moved with ease between Italian and English-speaking roles, starring in a string of successful films: Houseboat with Grant; The Key with Willliam Holden and Trevor Howard; It Started in Naples with Clark Gable and de Sica; The Millionaress with Peter Sellars; The Black Orchid and Heller in Pink Tights with Anthony Quinn, earning honors in Cannes, New York and London along the way. In 1969, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association named her the world's most popular star.
Some of Loren's other films include: El Cid, The Fall of the Roman Empire, Boy on a Dolphin, The Condemned of Altona, Judith, Arabesque, Charlie Chaplin's Countess from Hong Kong, Desire Under the Elms, Man of La Mancha, The Voyage, The Cassandra Crossing, and Saturday, Sunday and Monday. More recently she starred in Grumpier Old Men, Messages and Soleil. She has written four books including her autobiography Living and Loving (1979) and the best-seller, Sophia Loren's Recipes & Memories (1998). Loren is married to Carlo Ponti. They have two sons, Carlo and Edoardo.
for "Lives of the Saints" updated 06-Jul-2005
Biography #3
Sophia Loren (born September 20, 1934) is an Italian actress. She was born Sofia Villani Scicolone in Pozzuoli, Italy, the illegitimate daughter of Romilda Villani and Riccardo Scicolone. She grew up there in poverty but found her way into small parts in films in the 1950s. She was discovered by her future husband Carlo Ponti, who produced many of her films.Article text released under CC-BY-SA. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Sophia Loren" (16-Jun-2004)