49 Fun Facts About Sophia Loren

Sophia Loren was born with which surname, that of the father who refused to marry her mother?

Scicolone. Riccardo Scicolone gave Sofia his name but never married her mother, Romilda Villani; once Loren was earning, she paid him so that her sister Maria could carry the name as well.

In which town near Naples did the young Loren live with her mother, sister and grandmother?

Pozzuoli. Loren was actually born in a Rome clinic, but her unmarried mother soon took her home to this port town, whose munitions plant made it a target for Allied bombers.

What was Loren's mother Romilda's profession?

Piano teacher. Romilda's lessons paid for Sofia's acting school; at 17 she had won an MGM Greta Garbo lookalike contest, but her parents refused to let her take the prize, a trip to Hollywood.

How was the young Sofia wounded during an Allied bombing raid in the Second World War?

Shrapnel struck her chin as she ran for the railway tunnel her family used as a shelter. Months later an American soldier noticed the scar and took her to an army doctor, who made it all but vanish.

What did Loren's grandmother Luisa open in the family living room when American troops arrived?

A pub selling cherry liquor. On Sunday afternoons Luisa served the GIs a home-made brandy of black-market alcohol and cherry Strega, while Sofia's mother and sister entertained them with songs.

From what was Loren's dress for her first beauty pageant, in 1949, made?

Taffeta curtains. Her grandmother took the drapes down from the window and sewed them into a gown; Sofia was named one of twelve 'princesses', and her prizes included a train ticket to Rome.

Which 'Miss' title did the 15-year-old Sofia Lazzaro win at the 1950 Miss Italia pageant?

She was one of the last three finalists; Anna Maria Bugliari took the grand title. Loren returned as jury president in 2001.

Loren was an uncredited extra in which 1951 MGM epic filmed in Rome?

Quo Vadis. Her mother told her to answer 'yes' to whatever director Mervyn LeRoy asked in English; he soon saw she understood nothing, but hired her anyway as one of the slave girls.

Her stage name Sophia Loren was a twist on the name of which Swedish actress?

Märta Torén. Producer Goffredo Lombardo, looking at a poster of her, ran down the alphabet swapping the first letter of her surname until he reached Loren, then changed the f in Sofia to a ph.

In 1953 Loren starred in a film of which Verdi opera, miming to soprano Renata Tebaldi's voice?

Aida. By Loren's account the part was meant for Gina Lollobrigida, who backed out rather than mouth another woman's singing, so the title role went to the newcomer instead.

Which Italian actor became Loren's most frequent screen partner, starting with Too Bad She's Bad in 1954?

Marcello Mastroianni. Their partnership lasted forty years and ended with Robert Altman's Prêt-à-Porter (1994), in which Loren repeats her famous striptease for him and this time he falls asleep.

Which 1957 film starring Loren was the first Hollywood picture shot in Greece?

Boy on a Dolphin. Loren plays Phaedra, a sponge diver on Hydra who finds an ancient statue on the seabed and is courted by two men: an archaeologist who wants it for Greece and a collector who wants it for himself.

For a 1957 film, why was a trench dug on a beach for Loren?

She was taller than her co-star. Alan Ladd stood on a box for some shots and Loren walked in a trench for others; she recalled that the arrangement made him suffer.

Which Hollywood studio signed Loren to the contract that brought her to America in 1957?

Paramount. The studio welcomed her with a party at Romanoff's in Beverly Hills, where Jayne Mansfield leaned over her table in a low-cut dress and a photographer caught Loren's wary sideways glance.

Who was Loren's leading man in the 1958 romantic comedy Houseboat?

Cary Grant. He had proposed to her while they filmed The Pride and the Passion the year before; she chose Carlo Ponti instead, then had to play a wedding scene with Grant at the end of Houseboat.

Who wrote the original Houseboat script that was rewritten so Loren could take the female lead?

Betsy Drake. She wrote it to star in herself beside her husband, the film's leading man; once he had fallen for Loren the script was rewritten around her, and Drake took no credit for it.

Which novelty number did Loren sing in Houseboat and release as a single in 1958?

Bing! Bang! Bong! is the tune Loren's character sings at every opportunity; she also performs the film's Oscar-nominated ballad, Almost in Your Arms, and both were written for her by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans.

In which George Cukor film did Loren swap her dark hair for a blonde wig?

Heller in Pink Tights. Loren called herself Cukor's marionette on the 1960 western, made to copy his every gesture and intonation; only later, she wrote, did she see how much he had taught her.

Which 1960 Vittorio De Sica film won Loren the Academy Award for Best Actress?

Two Women. US distributor Joseph E. Levine is said to have bought the unfinished film on the strength of a single sequence; Loren's win was the first acting Oscar for a performance not in English.

What is the original Italian title of the 1960 war drama that won Loren her Oscar?

La ciociara. It means a woman from Ciociaria, the hill country south of Rome where novelist Alberto Moravia hid for months after Italy's 1943 armistice, the ordeal he turned into the book behind the film.

Which role in her Oscar-winning 1960 De Sica war drama was Loren originally cast to play?

Anna Magnani was to play the mother; Loren fought against type and got the part, with Eleonora Brown as the daughter.

Which French New Wave star played the young intellectual Michele in Loren's Oscar-winning 1960 war drama?

Jean-Paul Belmondo. To get real tears from young Eleonora Brown at the news of his character's death, De Sica told her that her own parents had been in an accident; Loren rushed over to say it wasn't true.

Why did Loren skip the ceremony at which she won her Best Actress Oscar?

She feared she would faint. Lose and she would faint from disappointment, win and she would faint from joy, she reasoned, so she stayed on her couch in Rome and learned the result from a phone call.

Loren shared a 2004 Grammy for a children's album with Mikhail Gorbachev and which former US president?

Bill Clinton. Loren narrated Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, Clinton read a new sequel in which Peter's grandson lets the wolf go free, and Gorbachev spoke the introduction.

Which 1964 epic paid Loren a $1 million fee?

The Fall of the Roman Empire. Loren played Lucilla, sister of the emperor Commodus, for producer Samuel Bronston; the film lost so much money that it helped drive his Madrid studio into bankruptcy.

Which actor played the title role opposite Loren's Chimene in El Cid?

Charlton Heston. He complained that Loren refused any ageing make-up, so his knight ends the film grey and battle-scarred while the wife who has waited years for him looks exactly as she did at the start.

After Loren balked at the El Cid script, it was rebuilt from Le Cid, a play by which French dramatist?

Corneille. With shooting about to start, blacklisted writer Ben Barzman was flown in and began reworking scenes from Pierre Corneille's 17th-century tragedy, which he had loved on stage in Paris.

With which British comic actor did Loren record the 1960 comedy single Goodness Gracious Me?

Peter Sellers. Beatles producer George Martin devised the duet for their film The Millionairess; the filmmakers left it out, so it went on sale as a single to promote the picture and reached the UK top five.

The 1963 anthology Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow won which Academy Award?

Best Foreign Language Film. For its famous striptease Loren, who had never seen one, took lessons from a Crazy Horse choreographer; her character then stops halfway, remembering a vow of chastity.

How does Adelina, Loren's Naples cigarette-seller in Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, avoid prison?

By staying continuously pregnant. The law spared expectant and nursing mothers, so Adelina has seven children in a row; when her worn-out husband fails to deliver an eighth she goes to jail, until the neighbours win her a pardon.

Marriage Italian Style was adapted from which Eduardo De Filippo play?

Filumena Marturano. De Filippo wrote it for his sister Titina; its heroine fakes a deathbed to win a wedding, then reveals that one of her three sons, she won't say which, is her husband's.

Who beat Loren to the Best Actress Oscar when she was nominated for Marriage Italian Style?

Julie Andrews, for Mary Poppins, her first film. She had lost the screen role of Eliza in My Fair Lady, which she created on stage, to Audrey Hepburn, who was not even nominated that year.

Which director's final film, A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), starred Loren opposite Marlon Brando?

Charlie Chaplin. In his late seventies he acted out every part for his stars to copy, which Loren loved and Marlon Brando took as an insult; Chaplin's last screen appearance is a few seconds in the film as an old steward.

How was Loren's first marriage to Carlo Ponti, in Mexico in 1957, conducted?

By proxy, with two lawyers standing in. Neither bride nor groom was in Mexico: Loren, at work in Hollywood, learned that she was a married woman from Louella Parsons's gossip column the next day.

Which country's citizenship did Loren and Carlo Ponti take so that he could divorce and marry her legally?

France. Italy had no divorce, so Ponti, his first wife Giuliana and Loren all became French; a French court then dissolved the first marriage, and Carlo and Sophia wed again in 1966.

In which 1972 film musical did Loren play the servant Aldonza opposite Peter O'Toole?

Man of La Mancha. Loren's Aldonza is the tavern drudge Don Quixote insists is his noble lady Dulcinea; Peter O'Toole acted the knight, but another man's voice sang his songs.

Loren's sister Maria married the youngest son of which Italian leader?

Benito Mussolini. Maria married the dictator's youngest son Romano, a jazz musician, in 1962, which made Loren the aunt of Alessandra Mussolini, who went on to sit in both the Italian and European parliaments.

In A Special Day (1977), Loren's housewife stays home on the day of what event in Rome?

Hitler's state visit. In May 1938 her Fascist husband and six children go off to cheer the parade, leaving Antonietta alone in the block with a neighbour who is about to be deported for being gay.

In 1981 Loren became one of the first film stars to launch her own branded version of which product?

A perfume. Coty called the scent simply Sophia, and where she led, other stars went: Cher's Uninhibited and Elizabeth Taylor's White Diamonds followed years later.

Which Dynasty role did Loren turn down in 1981?

Alexis Carrington. With Loren out, the scheming ex-wife went to Joan Collins; a Falcon Crest part written for Loren got away as well, and went to her old rival Gina Lollobrigida.

Why did Loren spend 17 days in an Italian prison in 1982?

Tax evasion. The sentence concerned an old tax return and had kept her out of Italy; she flew home and served it, she wrote, because she wanted to be free to see her family and friends there again.

In Grumpier Old Men (1995), which character does Loren's restaurant owner Maria marry?

Max Goldman (Walter Matthau). Maria arrives to turn the men's beloved bait shop into an Italian restaurant; Max sets out to sabotage her, discovers she loves fishing as much as he does and ends up at the altar.

Which 2009 Rob Marshall musical brought Loren her first SAG ensemble nomination?

Nine. The show sets Fellini's 8½ to music; Loren plays the blocked film director's dead mother, who comes to him in a dream and sings a lullaby that was written specially for the screen version.

Who directed Loren in The Life Ahead (2020), her first feature film in over a decade?

Her son Edoardo Ponti. He co-wrote the script and cast his mother as Madame Rosa, a Holocaust survivor and former prostitute in Bari who takes in the Senegalese street kid who robbed her.

Which streaming service released The Life Ahead in November 2020?

Netflix. The film's closing song, Io sì (Seen), co-written by Diane Warren and sung by Laura Pausini, won a Golden Globe, and Loren later chose it as one of her eight records on Desert Island Discs.

What luxury item did Loren choose on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs in 2021?

A pizza oven. On the same programme she confessed that she used to beat her co-stars at Scrabble by cheating, until Richard Burton caught her at it and refused ever to play her again.

Which football club's promotion did Loren, then aged 72, promise to celebrate with a striptease?

Napoli. In May 2007, with the club third in Serie B, she told Gazzetta dello Sport, 'If we go up I will do a striptease', and a few weeks later it went up.

Loren is godmother, and Steven Spielberg godfather, to which former child star?

Drew Barrymore. Spielberg directed his goddaughter in E.T., and after she posed for Playboy he sent her a quilt for her twentieth birthday with a note that read 'Cover yourself up'.

Which Italian film award named Loren Best Actress for a seventh time in 2021?

David di Donatello. Her first came for a part originally meant for Anna Magnani; collecting the seventh at 86, she said it was hard to believe the first had come more than 60 years earlier.