Gina Lollobrigida, Italian screen star, dead at 95 | CBC News

Gina Lollobrigida, who has died at the age of 95, shot to fame in the 1950s as a sultry Mediterranean sex symbol, then became a photographer and sculptor after stepping away from the movie world.

At the height of her fame in the 1950s and 1960s, Lollobrigida, who was known simply as “La Lollo,” was an internationally recognized epitome of Italian post-war cinema, rivalled only by Sophia Loren.

Tempestuous and impulsive by nature, she made headlines again in 2006, when, at age 79, she announced that she would marry a man 34 years her junior. She later called off the wedding, blaming the media 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. 

Roles with Bogart, Hudson, Sinatra

She burst to fame in Italy with the leading roles in two Italian comedies by Luigi Comencini — Bread, Love and Dreams, and Bread, Love and Jealousy.

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

Despite playing opposite other American stars such as Frank Sinatra, Rock Hudson and Burt Lancaster, she never clicked with Hollywood and preferred to work closer to home, making films throughout the 1960s.

Born on July 4, 1927, she attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome to complete her education. She first earned her living as a model for fotoromanzi, the photographic novels avidly read in Italy, using the stage name Diana Loris.

Lollobrigida accompanied her success on the screen with a hectic, often turbulent life that provided a rich source for Italian paparazzi and gossip writers.

Brief Toronto residency

In 1950 she married Yugoslavian doctor Milko Skofic, who became her manager. The couple had one son.

For a short-lived time beginning in 1960, they were sponsored by Skofic’s Canadian brother and set up a residence in Toronto’s Rosedale neighbourhood. She denied the move was to avoid Italian tax authorities, but by 1963 the couple were no longer spending time in Toronto.

They separated after nearly 17 years of marriage.

“Marriages are boring and almost always like funerals, and couples so often restrict each other too much,” she once said.

In 2006, when she was 79, she announced her intention to marry Javier Rigau, a Spaniard 34 years younger with whom she had a confidential close friendship for years.

Months later, she called off the wedding, saying that the media coverage had ruined her life with “endless attacks, slander and violence.”

Charity work, photojournalism

Lollobrigida made only sporadic on-screen performances after the early 1970s, and was likely last seen by North American audiences in mid-1980s guest roles on Falcon Crest and The Love Boat.

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.

She also scored a rare interview with Cuba’s leader, producing and directing the 1972 documentary film Portrait of Fidel Castro.

In her later years she returned to her first love, sculpting, keeping a summer home in the Tuscan city of Pietrasanta, an artist’s colony where she worked with sculptors such as Bottero.

She had a one-woman show there in 2008 and dedicated it to her friend, the late opera singer Maria Callas.

Exhibitions of her marble and bronze statues were also held in Paris, Moscow and the United States.

In 2013, when she was 85, an auction of her jewelry by Sotheby’s in Geneva fetched $4.9 million US and set a record for a pair of diamond and pearl earrings, which sold for $2.37 million. The proceeds went to stem cell research.

“Selling my jewels to help raise awareness of stem cell therapy, which can cure so many illnesses, seems to me a wonderful use to which to put them,” she said.

Last year, for the second time after a 1999 bid, she ran for the Senate in the Italian election. Running as an independent, Eurosceptic candidate in a Lazio riding, she received just one per cent of the vote.