Italian Screen Legend Gina Lollobrigida Dies at 95

Gina Lollobrigida , 1950s and 60s sex symbol, actor, photojournalist, sculptor, and shining face of Italy to the world, has died. She was 95.

Corriere della Sera reported the news, saying she had been “hospitalised for some time.”

Lollobrigida was known simply as “La Lollo” at the height of her career and was applauded as an internationally recognised epitome of Italian post-war cinema, rivalled only by Sophia Loren.

As Reuters reports, she made headlines after her film career was over in 2006, when, at age 79, she announced she would marry a man 34 years her junior. She later called off the wedding, blaming media intrusion for spoiling it.

“All my life I wanted a real love, an authentic love, but I have never had one. No one has ever truly loved me. I am a cumbersome woman,” she told an interviewer when she was 80.

Born to a working class family in a poor mountainous area east of Rome, she studied sculpture then got her break in the film world after finishing third in the 1947 Miss Italia beauty contest.

From there she went on to success after success.

A role opposite Humphrey Bogart in John Huston’s 1954 film Beat the Devil, catapulted her to worldwide fame and in 1955 she made what became one of her signature films, The World’s Most Beautiful Woman.

She was also directed by other film luminaries such as Rene Clair and Carol Reed.

But despite playing opposite other American stars such as Frank Sinatra and Burt Lancaster, she never clicked with Hollywood and preferred to work closer to home, making films throughout the 1960s with directors such as Mario Bolognini, the Reuters report recalls.

When she stopped making films, Lollobrigida developed new careers as a photographer and sculptor and was also a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and its Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

Between 1972 and 1994 she published six books of her photographs, including Italia Mia (My Italy), The Philippines, and the Wonder of Innocence, photographs of and for children.

“Children with their big wide-open eyes question us. Their looks should help us to forsake selfishness that undoubtedly leaves our hearts quite bare,” she wrote in its introduction.

The Guardian reports in 1999 Lollobrigida ran unsuccessfully for the European parliament representing former Italian prime minister Romano Prodi’s Democrats, but did not seem especially enthralled at the prospect.

“I’ve never been involved in politics,” she said at the time, “but when I got the offer I said ‘yes’ immediately … It’s only afterward that I thought about why this was a good thing. I don’t know how many votes I need. I don’t know anything.”

Ultimately her memory will be held fast for her admirers in her film work.

Her commercial peak came in the mid to late 1950s, when she starred in Solomon and Sheba, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Beautiful But Dangerous, the original title of which – La donna più bella del mondo – presented her as “the most beautiful woman in the world.”

Perhaps her last well-known movie was Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell, a farce by director Melvin Frank which also starred Phil Silvers, Peter Lawford and Telly Savalas.

In it, she played Carla, an Italian woman who had affairs with three American soldiers during World War Two and meets them all again during a squadron reunion 20 years later.

Lollobrigida is survived by her son, Milko, and grandson, Dimitri.

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