Sophia Loren

Sophia Loren is an Italian actress, born Sofia Villani Scicolone in Rome on 20 September 1934. After entering a beauty pageant she took acting lessons and began her film career at sixteen in 1950, playing small parts until a five-picture contract with Paramount in 1956 launched her international career with films such as The Pride and the Passion, Houseboat and It Started in Naples. Her performance as Cesira in Vittorio De Sica's Two Women (1960) won her the Academy Award for Best Actress, the first Oscar given for a non-English-language performance. She earned a second Oscar nomination for Marriage Italian-Style and a record seven David di Donatello awards for best actress, from Two Women through The Life Ahead in 2020. She received the Cecil B. DeMille Award, five special Golden Globes and an Academy Honorary Award, and was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour in 1991. After the 1980s she appeared in films less often, but she has stayed active in Italy and the United States for more than seven decades.