Gina Lollobrigida, film star and intercourse image, is useless at 95

Entertainment

She started her profession in her native Italy and, though she achieved fame in America labored extra usually in Europe. She later had a second profession as an artist and filmmaker.

By Anita Gates, New York Times Service

January 16, 2023 | 3:46 PM

Gina Lollobrigida, an Italian film actress who grew to become one of many post-World War II period’s first main European intercourse symbols, died on Monday in Rome. She was 95.

The loss of life was confirmed by her agent, Paola Comin.

Lollobrigida had already appeared in additional than two dozen European movies when she made her first English-language film, John Huston’s 1953 camp drama, “Beat the Devil,” wherein she performed Humphrey Bogart’s spouse and accomplice in crime. That movie, and the eye she garnered in “Fanfan la Tulipe,” an Italian-French interval comedy launched within the United States the identical 12 months, have been sufficient to place her on the quilt of Time journal in 1954.

She went on to unqualified American film stardom, exuding a healthful lustiness in a handful of high-profile movies. She starred in “Trapeze” (1956) with Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis; “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (1956), as Esmeralda, Quasimodo’s beloved magnificence (Anthony Quinn performed Quasimodo); “Solomon and Sheba” (1959), a biblical epic with Yul Brynner; “Come September” (1961), a romantic comedy with Rock Hudson; and “Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell” (1968), a comedy about an unwed mom.

Throughout her profession, nevertheless, she continued to make many extra European movies than American ones. She starred with the continent’s main males, together with Jean-Paul Belmondo, Marcello Mastroianni, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Yves Montand.

A 1955 movie, “La Donna Più Bella del Mondo” (“The Most Beautiful Woman in the World” — a time period some in Hollywood got here to make use of about Ms. Lollobrigida herself), launched within the United States as “Beautiful but Dangerous,” introduced Lollobrigida her first main appearing award: the David di Donatello, Italy’s equal of the Oscar. She gained the Donatello twice extra, for “Venere Imperial” (1962), in a tie with Silvana Mangano, and for “Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell,” in a tie with Monica Vitti.

Lollobrigida was all the time thought-about extra a intercourse image than a severe actress — at the least by the American press — however she was additionally nominated for a BAFTA award as greatest overseas actress in “Pane, Amore e Fantasia” (1953). She obtained Golden Globe nominations for “Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell” in 1969 and for a recurring function on the prime-time tv cleaning soap “Falcon Crest” in 1985.

After 20 years in entrance of the digicam, she launched into a multifaceted second profession as artist and filmmaker. She printed her first guide of pictures, “Italia Mia,” in 1973. “Believe it or not, she takes good pictures and isn’t just trading on her name,” Gene Thornton of The New York Times wrote.

She wrote, directed and produced “Ritratto di Fidel,” a documentary based mostly on her unique interview with Fidel Castro, the Communist chief of Cuba, which was proven on the 1975 Berlin movie pageant. She was additionally a sculptor, and an exhibition of 38 of her bronze items was offered on the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, amongst different venues, in 2003.

Lollobrigida was awarded the French Legion of Honor in 1993. She ran unsuccessfully for the European Parliament in 1999.

Liugina Lollobrigida was born on July 4, 1927, in Subiaco, Italy, east of Rome. She was certainly one of 4 daughters of Giovanni Lollobrigida, a furnishings maker, and Giuseppina (Mercuri) Lollobrigida. In her teenagers she studied artwork. But after she was found by a film director, Mario Costa, she started showing in small roles in 1946.

By 1949 she was a star, billed second in “La Sposa Non Può Attendere” (“The Bride Can’t Wait”). The subsequent 12 months she appeared in “Miss Italia,” impressed by her real-life expertise: She had are available in third within the 1947 Miss Italy pageant. (The winner, Lucia Bosé, and the primary runner-up, Gianna Maria Canale, additionally went on to film careers.)

After her movie profession wound down within the early Seventies, Lollobrigida appeared on tv in Europe and the United States, together with episodes of “Falcon Crest” and an American tv film, “Deceptions” (1985), wherein she performed an excitable duchess entertaining in Venice. Her final characteristic movie look was in “XXL” (1997), a French comedy that additionally starred Gérard Depardieu, a couple of Jewish household within the garment commerce.

She married Milko Skofic, a Yugoslavian-born doctor who grew to become her supervisor, in 1949. The couple separated in 1966 and divorced in 1971. Their son, Milko Jr., survives her, together with a grandson.

In 2006 she introduced plans to marry Javier Rigau y Rafols, a 45-year-old Spanish businessman, however she canceled the marriage lower than two months later, reportedly due to overwhelming press consideration.

Lollobrigida broke a thigh bone in a fall final 12 months and had surgical procedure to restore it in September. She mentioned she was in a position to stroll once more quickly afterward.

Lollobrigida was usually outspoken in interviews. In 1969 she recommended that ladies pretended to be silly in entrance of males. She claimed to haven’t any magnificence secrets and techniques and to do no train apart from dancing, and to haven’t any objections to being seen as a intercourse object and being instructed that she had a fantastic physique. “Why should I be offended?” she mentioned in a 1995 interview with The New York Times. “It’s not an insult.”

Yet she had grown philosophical with age. “Success is something that goes up and down,” she mentioned in the identical interview. “I was hungry, I was rich, the life changed again, and now I’m not rich, but I still have my mind.”

This article initially appeared in The New York Times.