We all know Sophia Loren as a beautiful and accomplished actress who has amassed a large following and millions of fans all over the world. Her life hasn’t always been easy, and she still finds it difficult to talk about certain occurrences from her past. Despite this, she has managed to persevere and demonstrate her strength to the rest of the world.
Despite the fact that Sophia Loren’s father was of noble descent and she is theoretically a marchioness, he was absent from her life and did not support the family. She was born into poverty and had to begin working with her grandmother as a teenager.
Sophia admits to being teased for being illegitimate throughout her childhood because her mother never married Sophia’s father. She was regarded as an ugly duckling till she was fourteen years old. Because she was tiny, she was given nicknames like “The Stick” and “Toothpick,” but she grew up to be one of the most beautiful ladies.
When young Sophia Loren began competing in beauty pageants and winning, her bullies were quickly proven wrong. Sophia’s grandmother sewed her a dress out of a pink curtain for her first competition because they couldn’t afford to buy a new one. At the Miss Italia pageant in 1950, she was named “Miss Elegance.”
Sophia earned her first role at the age of 16, and she played the lead role in a film at the age of 19. She utilized her first profits to help her family, such as paying for her sister’s name to be changed to her father’s because she was illegitimate and ashamed of it.
Sophia Loren won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the film Two Women (1961), which was the first major Academy Award for a performance in a language other than English or for an Italian actress.
She was the first female celebrity to launch her own perfume in 1981. Sophia Loren later created her own eyeglasses line.
Sophia’s popularity was never hurt by a 17-day prison sentence for tax evasion in 1982: when she was released, she was greeted by throngs of media and fans. The charges against her were dropped by the Italian Supreme Court in 2013.
The actress was named “one of the global cinema’s treasures” in 1991 after receiving the Academy Honorary Award for her outstanding contribution to the film industry.
Sophia Loren is known for embracing her body’s natural beauty. Sophia’s self-assurance was first displayed during her first screen test when a cameraman thought her looks were too unique and encouraged her to lose weight and get a nose operation. Despite the fact that this statement may have devastated the self-esteem of any other young actress, Sophia just refused and persisted.
Her self-assurance never wavered. The actress, for example, was not embarrassed to walk the red carpet with her armpit hair visible. “There is too much pressure to live up to certain notions of what women should look like,” the actress said, as a major proponent of loving and embracing oneself.
Sophia was cast in the role of a young lady in the drama Two Women, which became one of her most well-known works, but she insisted on playing the character’s mother instead. She defied the stereotype of “simply a pretty woman” and established herself as a capable actress.
Sophia Loren is a tall woman (about 5’9′′). Despite the fact that this terrified some male actors, who avoided appearing with her, she continued to wear towering high heels.
At the age of 72, the actress starred in the iconic Pirelli Calendar in 2007.
What is your favorite movie of Sophia Loren?
Preview photo credit ullstein bild Dtl. / ullstein bild / Getty Images
