Happy 90th Birthday to Sophia Loren!

Sophia Loren is an Italian actress who has spent nearly 70 years acting in Italian and American films and TV series. She is an Academy Award winner who has also been regarded as one of the most beautiful women in the world. As the talented actress celebrates her 90th birthday, we take a look back at her career.

Loren was born Sofia Villani Scicolone on September 20, 1934, in Rome, Italy, then her mother moved Sophia and her sister to Pozzuoli on the Bay of Naples. She grew up in poverty and was a sickly skinny child, but when she hit puberty, Loren’s beauty emerged. She placed second in a beauty pageant, which included a cash prize, so at age 15, Loren and her mother moved to Rome to become actresses.

Her first role was in the 1951 film, Quo Vadis, and she began modeling for Italian comic books. Loren had a small role in La Favorita in ’52, she played the titular character in Aida, and had a leading role in The Gold of Naples. In ’57, Loren made her Hollywood debut in The Pride and the Passion, which costarred Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra. It was around that time that she met her husband, producer Carlo Ponti, and the pair stayed together until his death in 2007.

Loren starred in the World War II set Two Women, in which she played a mother trying to raise and protect her daughter in war damaged Rome. She became an international star for the movie and won the 1961 Academy Award for Best Actress, becoming the first actress to win the award for a non-English language movie.

During the ‘60s, Loren starred in Italian, French, and American films, including Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, she won an Oscar for Marriage Italian Style, and she was lauded for her work in Arabesque and A Countess from Hong Kong. Loren worked mostly in Italy in the ‘70s in movies like A Special Day, and took fewer roles in the ‘80s while raising her children.

She became the first female star to have her own perfume, which was followed by an eyewear line, and in ’94, she wrote the book, Women and Beauty. Later in her career, Loren was in Ready to Wear, she played Walter Matthau’s love interest in Grumpier Old Men, she was in Soleil, Nine, and her most recent role was in 2020’s The Life Ahead.