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Italy mourns: the film icon Gina Lollobrigida has died.
Sad news from Italy: The film icon Gina Lollobrigida died at the age of 95. This is reported by the Italian news agency Ansa.
In the 50s and 60s she was considered the most beautiful woman in the world. The Italian actress was as famous for her movies as she was for her affairs. On screen, she has starred alongside Hollywood greats like Burt Lancaster, Frank Sinatra and Rock Hudson. “La Lollo” has proven again and again that she is not only blessed with beauty, but also with self-confidence.
Becoming one of the icons of Hollywood’s golden age wasn’t actually in Luigina Lollobrigida’s life plan. The Italian, who was born on July 4, 1927 in the mountain village of Subiaco, 50 kilometers east of Rome, began studying sculpture in Rome after her childhood in modest circumstances.
To keep her head above water, Lollobrigida worked as a singer and model – and in doing so drew the attention of film producers, including US tycoon Howard Hughes. He eventually brought her to Hollywood.
In 2015, Lollobrigida told Vanity Fair magazine how she dealt with her first role offer in the late 40s. At first she refused, but the producers would not have given up. ‘So I told them my price was a million lire – and I thought that would end it. But they said yes.”
The curvaceous, brunette Italian had her Hollywood breakthrough in 1953 with the adventure film “The Devil’s Chess” with Humphrey Bogart. The then already big movie star was impressed by Lollobrigida’s sex appeal. It makes “Marilyn Monroe look like Shirley Temple,” the former child star, Bogart said.
This was followed by film successes such as “Trapeze” from 1956 and “Salomon and the Queen of Sheba” from 1959. In 1961 Lollobrigida starred alongside Rock Hudson in the romantic comedy “Happy End in September”. She received a Golden Globe for it. In total, the Italian made more than 60 films.
Her private life was also film-ready. “I’ve had many lovers and I still have romances,” Lollobrigida was quoted as saying by several British newspapers in 2000. “I am very wicked.”
Lollobrigida was married to the Yugoslav doctor Milko Skofic from 1949 to 1971, and the couple had a son in 1957. Her second marriage to Javier Rigau Rifols, 34 years her junior, also ended in divorce.
In the 1970s, Lollobrigida turned away from acting and turned to photojournalism with great success. Lollobrigida directed a widely acclaimed documentary about the Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro for Italian television, and she is also known as a sculptor.
She later returned to acting sporadically, including for the US series “Falcon Crest” and Italian television productions in the 1980s. In 1996 she ran for the EU Parliament – but unsuccessfully.
In 2013, Lollobrigida made headlines by auctioning off part of her jewelry collection. She donated part of the proceeds of 3.8 million euros to stem cell research. She was also involved with UNESCO and Doctors Without Borders.
However, their large amount of money also creates discord. In 2021, Italy’s Supreme Court upheld a ruling that a guardian should look after their assets. Lollobrigida saw this as a plot by her son; she broke off contact with him and her grandson. Observers, on the other hand, fear that the diva let her assistant Andrea Piazolla turn her head in her old age. In a television show, she said that Piazolla was like a son to her and “my great happiness”.
Lollobrigida never found the man for life, as she said in the 2015 “Vanity Fair” interview. “Once I found the right one, he ran away from me,” she said. “I’m too strong, too popular.” (AFP/imh)