MILAN, Jan 16 (Reuters) – Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida has died at 95, ANSA news agency reported on Monday.
Lollobrigida shot to fame in the 1950s as a sultry Mediterranean sex symbol and later became a photographer and sculptor after stepping away from the movie world.
Last September, she failed in a bid to win a seat in the Italian parliament for a leftist political party at national elections.
Often described as “the most beautiful woman in the world”, her films included Crossed Swords, the Hunchback of Notre Dame and Beautiful But Dangerous.
She co-starred alongside the likes of Humphrey Bogart, Frank Sinatra, Rock Hudson and Errol Flynn.
Luigina Lollobrigida was born on 4 July, 1927. The daughter of a furniture manufacturer, Gina spent her teenage years avoiding wartime bombing raids before studying sculpture at Rome’s Academy of Fine Arts.
Her first English-language picture – opposite Bogart in John Huston’s Beat the Devil – was shot on the Amalfi coast, and was the beginning of a series of starring roles alongside the world’s most glamorous men.
In Crossed Swords it was Flynn; in the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Antony Quinn. She realised her celebrity was global when 60,000 turned up to greet her in Argentina. They included the country’s dashing President, Juan Peron.
She won awards for Beautiful But Dangerous – as an orphan opposite one of Italy’s finest actors, Vittorio Gassman. She played a manipulative circus performer in Trapeze – with Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis.
