ROME (AP) — Italian movie legend Gina Lollobrigida, who achieved worldwide stardom throughout the Nineteen Fifties and was dubbed “essentially the most stunning girl on this planet” after the title of considered one of her motion pictures, died in Rome on Monday, her agent mentioned. She was 95.
The agent, Paola Comin, didn’t present particulars. Lollobrigida had surgical procedure in September to restore a thigh bone damaged in a fall. She returned residence and mentioned she had rapidly resumed strolling.
A drawn portrait of the diva graced a 1954 cowl of Time journal, which likened her to a “goddess” in an article about Italian movie-making. Greater than a half-century later, Lollobrigida nonetheless turned heads together with her brown, curly hair and statuesque determine, and most well-liked to be referred to as an actress as an alternative of the gender-neutral time period actor.
“Lollo,” as she was lovingly nicknamed by Italians, started making motion pictures in Italy simply after the top of World Battle II, because the nation started to advertise on the massive display a stereotypical idea of Mediterranean magnificence as buxom and brunette.
Moreover “The World’s Most Stunning Girl” in 1955, profession highlights included Golden Globe-winner “Come September,” with Rock Hudson; “Trapeze;” “Beat the Satan,” a 1953 John Huston movie starring Humphrey Bogart and Jennifer Jones; and “Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell,” which gained Lollobrigida Italy’s high film award, a David di Donatello, as finest actress in 1969.
In Italy, she labored with a few of the nation’s high administrators following the battle, together with Mario Monicelli, Luigi Comencini, Pietro Germi and Vittorio De Sica.
Two of her extra fashionable movies at residence have been Comencini’s “Pane Amore e Fantasia” (“Bread, Love and Desires”) in 1953, and the sequel a 12 months later, “Pane Amore e Gelosia” (“Bread, Love and Jealousy”). Her male foil was Vittorio Gassman, considered one of Italy’s main males on the display.
Lollobrigida additionally was an achieved sculptor, painter and photographer, and finally primarily dropped movie for the opposite arts. Along with her digicam, she roamed the world from what was then the Soviet Union to Australia. In 1974, Fidel Castro hosted her as a visitor in Cuba for 12 days as she labored on a photograph reportage.
Lollobrigida was born on July 4, 1927 in Subiaco, a picturesque hill city close to Rome, the place her father was a furnishings maker. Lollobrigida started her profession in magnificence contests, posing for the covers of magazines and making transient appearances in minor movies. Producer Mario Costa plucked her from the streets of Rome to seem on the massive display.
Eccentric mogul Howard Hughes finally introduced Lollobrigida to the USA, the place she carried out with a few of Hollywood’s main males of the Nineteen Fifties and 60s, together with Frank Sinatra, Sean Connery, Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis and Yul Brynner.
Through the years, her co-stars additionally included Europe’s most voguish male stars of the period, amongst them Louis Jourdan, Fernando Rey, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Alec Guinness.
Whereas Lollobrigida performed some dramatic roles, her intercourse image picture outlined her profession, and her hottest characters have been in lighthearted comedies such because the “Bread, Love” trilogy.
With lush eyelashes and thick, brown curls framing her face, Lollobrigida began a coiffure rage within the Nineteen Fifties generally known as the “poodle minimize.” Gossip columnists commented on alleged rivalries between her and Sophia Loren, one other Italian movie star celebrated for her magnificence,
In center age, Lollobrigida’s romance with a person 34 years her junior, Javier Rigau, from Barcelona, Spain, saved gossip pages buzzing for years.
“I've at all times had a weak spot for youthful males as a result of they're beneficiant and don't have any complexes,” the actress informed Spain’s “Hola” journal. After greater than 20 years of relationship, in 2006, the then-79-year-old Lollobrigida introduced that she would marry Rigau, however the marriage ceremony by no means occurred.
Her first marriage, to Milko Skofic, a Yugoslavia-born physician, led to divorce in 1971.
Within the final years of her life, Lollobrigida’s identify extra incessantly appeared in articles by journalists overlaying Rome’s courts, not the glamour scene, as authorized battles have been waged over whether or not she had the psychological competence to are inclined to her funds.
On her web site, Lollobrigida recalled how her household misplaced its home throughout the bombings of World Battle II and went to reside in Rome. She studied sculpture and portray at a highschool devoted to the humanities, whereas her two sisters labored as movie show ushers to permit her to proceed her research.
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Maria Grazia Murru contributed reporting.
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