Everything you see, I owe to spaghetti

"You have to be born a sex symbol. You don't become one. If you're born with it, you'll have it even when you're 100 years old."

"Everything you see, I owe to spaghetti."
Sophia Loren

Happy Birthday Sophia Loren! Widely considered to be the most popular Italian actress, the diva was 73 this week.

Sophia Loren was born Sofia Villani Scicolone in Rome. Her father Riccardo Scicolone was an engineer and her mother Romilda Villani was an aspiring actress and piano teacher. Loren grew up in poverty in wartime Pozzuoli near Naples, sharing a small flat with her sister Maria, her grandparents and her uncles and aunts.

Loren was discovered by her future husband, the much older and already-married film producer Carlo Ponti, and they wed on September 17, 1957, three days before her 23rd birthday. Their first marriage had to be annulled in order to keep Ponti from being charged with bigamy. The couple remarried on April 9, 1966, but only after Sophia, Ponti, and Ponti's first wife all obtained French citizenship, thus enabling Carlo to divorce his first wife and marry Sophia in France, where at the time Catholic doctrines regarding divorce did not prevent legal civil marriage. The couple remained together until Ponti's death on January 9, 2007.

Sophia has made more than 90 films, and won the Best Actress Oscar for Two Women in 1960 - the first awarded for a foreign film. With her voluptuous figure, she became one of the major sex symbols of the 1960s, competing with Marilyn Monroe, Brigitte Bardot and Jane Fonda. Even in her sixties she was chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history, and in 2006 at the age of 72 she became the oldest woman to pose seductively for the Pirelli calendar! She was a very close friend of major stars such as Cary Grant and Peter Sellers, with whom she performed two duets, Goodness Gracious Me and Bangers and Mash which were major hits in the UK pop chart.

In 1991, Loren received an honorary Academy Award for her contribution to world cinema and was declared "one of the world cinema's treasures". Long may she reign, and continue to delight her many many fans!

Sophia Loren on IMDB