Gina Lollobrigida 1927 – 2023

Gina (Luigina) Lollobrigida, born 4 July 1927 Subiaco Italy; died 16 January 2023 Rome, Italy.

The Guardian

Film actor of the 1950s and 60s who went from early Italian roles to become an international star.

The actor Gina Lollobrigida, who has died aged 95, was one of the great film stars of the 1950s and 60s, and an icon of Italian cinema who became known as “the most beautiful woman in the world”.

The film that immortalised her sultry qualities more than any other was Pane, Amore e Fantasia (Bread, Love and Dreams, 1953). Her character’s sincere love for the shy but honest young cop in preference to the extrovert sergeant major played with panache by De Sica made her popular with audiences everywhere, and a pin-up around the world, although the film was panned by most critics.

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Lollobrigida was to star opposite great leading men including Burt Lancaster (in Trapeze, 1956), Anthony Quinn (in Jean Delannoy’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 1956), Yul Brynner (in Solomon and Sheba, 1959) and Sean Connery (in Woman of Straw, 1964), but she continued to appear in European films, such as the elegant historical epic Venere Imperiale (Imperial Venus, 1963), in which she played Napoleon’s sister Paolina. In Buona Sera, Mrs Campbell (1968), she played on her early peasant image, as an Italian woman who convinces each of three former American GIs (Phil Silvers, Peter Lawford and Telly Savalas) that he is the father of her daughter, and won best actress at the David di Donatello awards for her performance.