Extraordinarily beautiful actor who managed against formidable odds to rise from extreme poverty and obscurity in post-war Italy while struggling against typecasting and thankless roles that have been the fate of similarly endowed performers. The illegitimate daughter of a frustrated actress, the young Loren was so thin as a child she was nicknamed “the Stick”. With American film production companies arriving in post-war Rome, her mother took Loren north from Naples where they were then living. She managed to get irregular work as a print model, entered beauty contests and took extra work in such films as “Quo Vadis” (made in 1949 but released in 1951). In 1951 alone she had bits in nine films, the same year she met producer and future husband Carlo Ponti, one of a panel of judges presiding over a beauty contest in which she was competing. Under Ponti’s guidance she became one of Italy’s leading stars of the 1950s, an earthy, voluptuous figure.
