NAME: Sophia Loren

AGE: Just turned 70!

NATIONALITY: Italian, but took on French nationality to marry Carlo Ponti

CLAIM TO FAME: One of the world’s most stunning and age-resistant women

WITH beauty radiant enough to fill the Colosseum, Sophia Loren is one of the most enticing and graceful actresses alive. And it is hard to believe that this age-resistant screen goddess celebrated her 70th birthday on September 20!

Emerging first, decades ago, as a sex symbol on the silver screen and later showing her potential in serious as well as comic roles, Sophia is one of the few European actresses who has won fame and acclaim both at home and abroad.

And all this is no mean achievement for someone who was teased at school for being skinny and nicknamed ‘the toothpick’, and whose first screen test was a disaster, mainly due to her oversized nose and hips. She adamantly refused to either have plastic surgery or lose weight as she liked her distinct look, she has not regretted the decision. She once joked about her looks, saying: “Everything I have, I owe to spaghetti.”

Sultry looks and a down-to-earth intelligence has turned her into a living legend with more than 100 films to her credit during a career spanning more than 50 years.

An illegitimate child who grew up in the slums of Second World War Naples, Sophia’s early experiences gave her a strong determination and quest for success. The skinny girl who suddenly turned into a curvy beauty won a beauty contest at 14, wearing a pink dress sewn by her mother from an old curtain. Another pageant later, her life transformed when she caught the eye of producer Carlo Ponti. The two later married.

He groomed her for stardom and small movie roles soon led to major ones, such has Gold of Naples (1954) and The Miller’s Wife (1955). Her Hollywood debut was the period film The Pride and Passion, alongside Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra.

So bewitched was Cary Grant with Sophia that he proposed to her. This crisis finally made Ponti — with whom Sophia had been involved for years but not married because he was already married with two children and divorce was an legal impossibility in Italy at that time — to obtain a divorce in Mexico and marry Sophia there in 1957. They married again in 1966 in France when the two obtained French nationality.

Ponti was 24 years her senior and to date many have been amused by the lasting union of the short, portly producer with the statuesque siren. Sophia has explained the situation as such: “I needed a father. I needed a husband. I was adopted by Carlo and I married my father.” The couple has two sons; Carlo Ponti Junior recently married his Hungarian fiancee in a star-studded ceremony in Budapest.

As for Sophia, she reached the zenith of her career with her performance in De Sica’s 1961 Italian production La Ciociara (Two Women). For her portrayal of a wartime rape victim, she earned an Academy Award, becoming the first and only woman to win a Best Actress for a foreign film at the Oscars. It took 38 years for another Italian to win an Oscar when Roberto Benigni clinched it in 1998 for his performance in La Vita e’ Bella (Life is Beautiful). Fittingly, it was Loren who handed him the statue. The Academy awarded her another Oscar for lifetime achievement in 1990.

Sophia explains her success simply: “The two big advantages I had at birth were to have been born wise and to have been born in poverty.”

Happy birthday, timeless lady! — Ambreen Arshad