ROME (AP) — Italian movie legend Gina Lollobrigida, who accomplished world stardom right through the Fifties and was once dubbed “probably the most gorgeous girl on the planet” after the name of considered one of her motion pictures, died in Rome on Monday, her agent mentioned. She was once 95.
The agent, Paola Comin, didn’t supply main points. Lollobrigida had surgical operation in September to fix a thigh bone damaged in a fall. She returned house and mentioned she had briefly resumed strolling.
A drawn portrait of the diva graced a 1954 quilt of Time mag, which likened her to a “goddess” in a piece of writing about Italian movie-making. Greater than a half-century later, Lollobrigida nonetheless grew to become heads along with her brown, curly hair and statuesque determine, and most popular to be referred to as an actress as an alternative of the gender-neutral time period actor.
“Lollo,” as she was once lovingly nicknamed by way of Italians, started making motion pictures in Italy simply after the top of Global Struggle II, as the rustic started to advertise at the giant display screen a stereotypical idea of Mediterranean attractiveness as buxom and brunette.
But even so “The Global’s Maximum Gorgeous Lady” in 1955, occupation highlights incorporated 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 received Lollobrigida Italy’s most sensible film award, a David di Donatello, as highest actress in 1969.
In Italy, she labored with one of the vital nation’s most sensible administrators following the struggle, together with Mario Monicelli, Luigi Comencini, Pietro Germi and Vittorio De Sica.
Two of her extra in style movies at house have been Comencini’s “Pane Amore e Fantasia” (“Bread, Love and Desires”) in 1953, and the sequel a yr later, “Pane Amore e Gelosia” (“Bread, Love and Jealousy”). Her male foil was once Vittorio Gassman, considered one of Italy’s main males at the display screen.
Lollobrigida additionally was once an achieved sculptor, painter and photographer, and sooner or later necessarily dropped movie for the opposite arts. Together with her digicam, she roamed the arena from what was once 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 once born on July 4, 1927 in Subiaco, a picturesque hill the town close to Rome, the place her father was once a furnishings maker. Lollobrigida started her occupation in attractiveness contests, posing for the covers of magazines and making temporary appearances in minor movies. Manufacturer Mario Costa plucked her from the streets of Rome to seem at the giant display screen.
Eccentric tycoon Howard Hughes sooner or later introduced Lollobrigida to the US, the place she carried out with a few of Hollywood’s main males of the Fifties and 60s, together with Frank Sinatra, Sean Connery, Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis and Yul Brynner.
Over time, her co-stars additionally incorporated Europe’s maximum speeding male stars of the technology, amongst them Louis Jourdan, Fernando Rey, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Alec Guinness.
Whilst Lollobrigida performed some dramatic roles, her intercourse image symbol outlined her occupation, 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 Fifties referred to as the “poodle lower.” Gossip columnists commented on alleged rivalries between her and Sophia Loren, any other Italian movie famous person celebrated for her attractiveness,
In center age, Lollobrigida’s romance with a person 34 years her junior, Javier Rigau, from Barcelona, Spain, stored gossip pages humming for years.
“I’ve all the time had a weak point for more youthful males as a result of they’re beneficiant and don’t have any complexes,” the actress informed Spain’s “Hola” mag. After greater than twenty years of courting, in 2006, the then-79-year-old Lollobrigida introduced that she would marry Rigau, however the wedding ceremony by no means took place.
Her first marriage, to Milko Skofic, a Yugoslavia-born physician, led to divorce in 1971.
Within the closing years of her lifestyles, Lollobrigida’s title extra often gave the impression in articles by way of newshounds masking Rome’s courts, no longer the glamour scene, as criminal battles have been waged over whether or not she had the psychological competence to generally tend to her funds.
On her site, Lollobrigida recalled how her circle of relatives misplaced its space right through the bombings of Global Struggle II and went to are living in Rome. She studied sculpture and portray at a highschool devoted to the humanities, whilst her two sisters labored as film theater ushers to permit her to proceed her research.
Maria Grazia Murru contributed reporting.