Gina Lollobrigida, the high-spirited actor who had dual careers in Hollywood and Europe but may be more fondly remembered in her native Italy for jump-starting an era of celebration and indulgence after years of warfare and oppression, has died. She was 95.
Forever beloved in her homeland, Lollobrigida died in Rome, the Italian news agency Lapresse said, quoting Tuscany Gov. Eugenio Giani. Lollobrigida was an honorary citizen of a Tuscan town.
Her agent, Paola Comin, also confirmed her death but did not give details, the Associated Press reported.
Lollobrigida had surgery in September for a broken thigh bone after a fall. She returned home and said she had quickly resumed walking.
Lollobrigida’s rise to stardom was rapid. She made movies in Europe and the U.S., signed a long-term Hollywood contract with Howard Hughes, starred alongside Yul Brynner, Frank Sinatra and Rock Hudson, kept company with Salvador Dali, Fidel Castro and pioneering heart surgeon Christiaan Barnard, and had a running drama-fest with countrywoman Sophia Loren, a rivalry so fierce one wondered whether there was enough oxygen in Italy for the two of them.
“I am fire. I’m a volcano. All the things I do, I do with passion, fire and strength,” she said in a 1994 interview with The Times. “That’s me.”
Born in Subiaco, Italy, in 1927 (though the actress sometimes claimed it was 1928), Lollobrigida was the second of four daughters of Giovanni and Giuseppina Lollobrigida. When Allied air attacks destroyed their home in the early days of World War II, the family fled to the urban core of Rome.
She was studying sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome when a talent agent spotted her and offered her a modeling and acting contract. When she was summoned to the Cinecitta studios, the hub of Italian cinema, she was offered 1,000 lire to sign.
“I told them my asking price was 1 million lire, thinking that would put a stop to the whole thing,” Lollobrigida told Vanity Fair in 2015. “But they said yes!”
Lollobrigida was cast in several movies filmed in Italy, including several for which she received no credit, before filming “Alina,” a melodrama in which Lollobrigida uses her beauty as her chief weapon in a dangerous smuggling operation. Among others, it caught the attention of Hughes, the eccentric businessman, aviator and maverick film tycoon.
He brought her to Hollywood and signed her to a seven-year deal, a pact that prohibited her from working with any American film studio. She never made a film with Hughes and, tired of his advances and erratic behavior, returned to Italy, where her career bloomed.
As Italy was pulling itself from the rubble of World War II and the grinding oppression of fascism, Lollobrigida emerged as the face of la dolce vita, a siren beckoning Romans to once again indulge, celebrate and embrace.
“She represented something iconic, far more important than the actual talent she often displayed in her work as an actress,” wrote the late author Peter Bondanella in his book “Italian Cinema.”
Lollobrigida appeared in nearly a dozen movies before her role in “Bread, Love and Dreams” earned her a BAFTA award for best foreign actress. It is regarded by some critics as her best, most natural role.
In 1953, she returned to Hollywood and was paired with Humphrey Bogart in “Beat the Devil,” an adventure/comedy directed by John Huston and written by Truman Capote on a day-by-day basis during filming in Italy. It marked Lollobrigida’s first English-speaking film and — as would become her fate — called for her to play the role of a seductress. Though the film helped introduce Lollobrigida to America, it was a box office failure.
She fared better three years later when she was cast as the manipulative, scheming Lola in “Trapeze,” the story of a crippled acrobat who tries to coax greatness from his brash, easily distracted protégé, roles filled by Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis. The film, shot in Paris, was a financial success.
Lollobrigida went on to team up with Yul Brynner in “Solomon and Sheba,” a sexed-up Bible story, and with Rock Hudson in “Come September,” a 1961 romantic comedy about a married man and his mistress who discover that the villa where they meet up every year has been turned into a youth hostel. Sandra Dee and Bobby Darin are among the young tourists staying at the hostel. Despite a pancake-thin plot, the film did well.
As the Hollywood movie offers slowed, Lollobrigida returned to Italian cinema, though she did pick up a role in 1984 on the prime time soap opera “Falcon Crest” and made an obligatory appearance on “The Love Boat.”
She dabbled in sculpture and pursued a second career as a photographer, producing five books of photos. In 1973, she flew to Cuba — armed, she said, with eight cameras, 200 rolls of film and 10 pairs of blue jeans — and landed an interview with Fidel Castro, which was published in the Italian magazine Gente and billed as an exclusive.
“I was sunbathing nude in the garden of the residence when a man appeared and announced the presence of Fidel. He smiled at me, pretending not to notice my scanty clothing,” she wrote. “He shook hands with me, welcoming me to Cuba.”
Though she was often in the company of rich and famous men, she was married only once. Or so she claimed.
In 2010, a man more than three decades her junior claimed the two had wed in Barcelona, Spain. She disputed the claim, filed suit in Italy and Spain and vowed to launch “an international investigation.” The truth, wherever it might be found, was quickly swallowed up in legal disputes.
Lollobrigida is survived by a son, Milko Skofic Jr.
