This internationally popular Italian film actress is best known for her portrayals of passionate, earthy women. At first noticed only for her shapely figure, she was later recognized as a talented actress of great emotional depth. An illegitimate child, Loren spent her childhood in a poor, war-torn suburb of Naples. At 15, after winning second place in a local beauty contest, she became a model and film extra in Rome. Two years later she starred in a semidocumentary, Africa sotto i mari (1952; "Africa Under the Sea"). Dozens of later films as varied as the comedy L'oro di Napoli (1954; "The Gold of Naples") and the adaptation of the opera Aida (1954) brought her European fame and, eventually, international stardom. Though most of Loren's Hollywood films are unremarkable, she won critical attention for her portrayal of the pessimistic, wily girl in Desire Under the Elms (1958) and as the widow of a gangster in The Black Orchid (1959). She achieved immense respect as an actress in a film directed by Vittorio De Sica, La ciociara (1961; "The Peasant"; Two Women), for which she won an American Academy Award for her performance as a devoted mother of a teenaged girl in wartime Italy. Her later films include Ieri, oggi, domani (1964; Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow), Matrimonio all'italiana (1964; Marriage--Italian Style), Sunflower (1970), The Priest's Wife (1971), Man of La Mancha (1972), Il Viaggio (1974; The Voyage), and Una Giornata Particolare (1977; A Special Day). Loren's marriage in 1957 to the producer Carlo Ponti, who guided her early film career, was interrupted in 1962 by a highly publicized charge of bigamy resulting from the stringent Italian divorce laws. After an annulment, they were remarried in 1966.

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