Screen legend Gina Lollobrigida has died.
Her grandnephew, Italian Minister of Agriculture Francesco Lollobrigida, tweeted news of her death, calling her
one of the brightest stars of Italian cinematography and culture.”
Together with Sophia Loren, Lollobrigida came to symbolize the earthy sexuality of Italian actresses in the 50s and 60s.
After training as a painter and sculptor, Lollobrigida became a successful beauty queen and model, before making her first film appearance in 1946, with a small role in the swashbuckling adventure The Black Eagle.
By the early 1950s, she was a huge star in Europe. She made her English-language debut in 1953, in John Huston’s Beat the Devil, with co-stars Humphrey Bogart and Jennifer Jones. What a debut.
When film roles began to dwindle in the 70s, Lollobrigida made a new career for herself as a photographer. She occasionally appeared in film and on TV, most famously in a recurring role in US prime-time soap Falcon Crest in the 80s.
Last year, she ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the Italian Senate, telling newspaper Corriere della Sera before the country’s elections:
I was just tired of hearing politicians arguing with each other without ever getting to the point.”
She is survived by a son, Andrea Milko, whom she shared with her husband Milko Škofič. The couple were married from 1949 to 1971, while Lollabrigida’s son was also her manager.
In 2021, a court ruled that her son should become her legal guardian.
Gina Lollobrigida was 95.
Gina Lollobrigida, the Italian movie actress who became one of the post-World War II era’s first major European sex symbols, has died at 95.
— The New York Times (@nytimes) January 16, 2023
She went on to U.S. movie stardom and later established a second career as an artist and filmmaker.https://t.co/451hoB8kE1
(via CNN)
