SOPHIA LOREN

Sophia Loren is an Italian actress and sex symbol from the 1950s to the present. At age 14, Sophia Loren entered a beauty contest where she placed as one of the finalists. It was there that Sophia caught the attention of film producer Carlo Ponti, some 22 years her senior. They married in 1957 when she was 23, but had to divorce five years later when he was threatened with bigamy charges because the church did not recognize his divorce! In 1966 he finally obtained a divorce from his first wife and they were re-married, and remained married until Ponti's passing in 2007, when he was 94! She stood out from all the other sex symbols of her era because she could truly act, and she deservedly won the Best Actress Oscar! But decades before Jacqueline Bisset made headlines in her see-through diving suit, Loren shocked the world (but thrilled all American males!) when she appeared in her see-through shirt in 1957's Boy on a Dolphin! Some of her film roles include: El Cid, La Ciociara, Boy on a Dolphin, Two Women (in which she won the Best Actress Academy Award), and Marriage Italian Style. As of 2021, she is still alive at the age of 86!