ROME, Jan 10: Carlo Ponti, one of Italy's best-known film producers and the husband of actress Sophia Loren, has died at the age of 94, his family said on Wednesday. Here are five facts about him:

- Ponti started out as a lawyer and began making films by chance in 1938 when a producer who was a client of the law firm where Ponti worked had to flee Italy and asked him to take over.

- He preferred making quality movies to box-office hits and often said: “I don't make deals, I make pictures.” Best known for producing “Dr. Zhivago” in 1965, other classics to his name include “La Strada” (1954), “Marriage Italian Style” (1964), “Blowup” (1966) and “A Special Day” (1977).

- Ponti and Loren met in 1952 when Ponti, married and already an established producer, cast his vote for a poor girl from a Naples slum in a beauty contest. Twenty years her senior, he gave Loren her first movie role.

- Their affair created a furore in Roman Catholic Italy and Ponti was charged with bigamy. The couple fled the country in 1957 to marry in Mexico and moved to Hollywood. Ponti was not acquitted of bigamy until 1968.

- Ponti took French citizenship in 1965. During his long absence, an Italian court sentenced him in 1979 to four years in jail and a 26-million-dollar fine, on charges of illegally exporting capital. The Supreme Court dismissed the charges in 1987 and released his frozen assets.—Reuters