Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida has died at the age of 95.
She was one of the highest-profile European actresses of the 1950s and early 1960s, acting alongside such Hollywood stars as Humphrey Bogart, Rock Hudson, Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, and Frank Sinatra.
Lollobrigida with Tony Curtis in Trapeze, in 1956. Photo: Snap/Shutterstock
Coming from humble beginnings, he became one of the most recognizable faces in post-war Italian cinema.
An international sex symbol thanks to her sultry Mediterranean looks, and rivaled only by fellow Italian actress Sophia Loren, Lollobrigida was one of the last remaining stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
His agent said he died in Rome on Monday.
Known in Italy simply as “La Lollo,” she starred in films such as The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, Solomon and Sheba, Beautiful But Dangerous, and The World’s Most Beautiful Woman during a five-decade acting career.
Lollobrigida found success as a photographer and sculptor in later life and also ventured into politics.
However, he failed to win a seat in parliament for Sovereign and Popular Italy (ISP), a left-wing party, during the September elections after they failed to meet the 3% threshold.
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Gina Lollobrigida: ‘The film is magical’
In 1975, rumors of an affair with Cuban leader Fidel Castro surfaced after she gained exclusive access to him for a documentary he produced.
Lollobrigida also made headlines in 2006, at the age of 79, when she announced that she would marry a man 34 years her junior.
When she was 80 years old, she said in an interview: “All my life I wanted a real love, a real love, but I have never had it. No one has ever really loved me. I am a cumbersome woman.”
Lollobrigida with Yul Brynner in Solomon And Sheba, in 1959. Photo: Moviestore/Shutterstock
Lollobrigida got her break in movies after finishing third in the 1947 Miss Italy pageant. One of her first roles was playing an adulteress in 1953’s The Wayward Wife.
Leading roles in two Italian comedies followed, Pan, Love and Dreams, and Pan, Love and Jealousy.
A role opposite Humphrey Bogart in John Huston’s Beat the Devil added to his exposure.
But it was the 1955 film The Most Beautiful Woman in the World that sealed her worldwide fame and became one of her signature roles.
Despite making it big in Hollywood, he preferred to work closer to home, making movies throughout the 1960s with Italian directors like Mario Bolognini.
Her last known film, the 1968 farce Buona Sera, Mrs Campbell, which also starred American actor Telly Savalas, earned her several award nominations.
Lollobrigida with Anthony Quinn in The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1957. Photo: Snap/Shutterstock
Born Luigia Lollobrigida in July 1927 to a working-class family in Subiaco, a hilly area east of Rome, she studied at the city’s Academy of Fine Arts before working as a model under the stage name Diana Loris.
Stormy and impulsive, her success on the screen was accompanied by intense interest from Italian paparazzi and gossip writers.
At one point, in an attempt to protect his private life, he withdrew to an isolated villa on the ancient Appian Way in Rome.
In 1950 she married a Yugoslav doctor, Milko Skofic, who later became her manager. The couple had a son.
They separated after almost 17 years, and Lollobrigida said at the time that he had no intention of remarrying.
However, in 2006 she announced that she would marry her close friend Javier Rigau, a Spaniard 34 years her junior. She eventually called off the wedding, blaming the media for botching it.
Lollobrigida at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles in 1959. Photo: AP
He said in an interview that he felt responsible for Rigau’s suffering after Spanish media branded him an opportunist. Instead, she said that she was “more used to having falsehoods written about me.”
During a subsequent trip to the US, he called on Congress to pass stronger laws protecting people’s privacy against media intrusion.
After her stellar career as an actress, Lollobrigida forged a successful second career as a photojournalist and sculptor.
She was also a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and its Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
In addition, he has published six books of his own photography, with themes including Italy, the Philippines, and children.
Photo: Lollobrigida photographed in the 1980s. Baril Pascal/ABACA/Shutterstock
In 1975 she made the documentary Portrait of Fidel Castro and for years she was surrounded by rumors that she had had an affair with the Cuban leader.
She also spoke in interviews of being a “great friend” to India’s first female prime minister, Indira Gandhi.
In his later years he devoted himself to sculpture, spending his summers living in an artists’ colony in the Tuscan town of Pietrasanta.
She had a one-woman show there in 2008 and dedicated it to her friend, the late opera singer Maria Callas.
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Exhibitions of his marble and bronze statues have been held in Paris, Moscow and the United States.
In 2013, when she was 85, an auction of her jewelry by Sotheby’s in Geneva sold for $4.9 million (£4.1 million) and set a record for a pair of diamond and pearl earrings, which sold for $2.37 million (£1.9 million). Proceeds went towards stem cell research.
She said of the sale: “Jewelry is meant to give pleasure and for many years I had enormous pleasure wearing mine.
“Selling my jewelry to help raise awareness about stem cell therapy, which can cure so many diseases, seems like a wonderful use to put it to me.”
