Gina Lollobrigida's Obituary: Tracing the rise, fall and rerise of the legendary actress and International sex symbol

Gina Lollobrigida, the legendary actress and the International sex symbol of the 50s and 60s, passed away at the age of 95, as confirmed by her agent. The agent, Paola Comin, didn’t provide details. Lollobrigida had surgery in September to repair a thigh bone broken in a fall. She returned home and said she had quickly resumed walking. The Flourishing Career “Lollo,” as she was lovingly nicknamed by Italians, began making movies in Italy just after the end of World War II, as the country began to promote on the big screen a stereotypical concept of Mediterranean beauty as buxom and brunette. Besides “The World’s Most Beautiful Woman” in 1955, career highlights included Golden Globe-winner “Come September,” with Rock Hudson; “Trapeze;” “Beat the Devil,” a 1953 John Huston film starring Humphrey Bogart and Jennifer Jones; and “Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell,” which won Lollobrigida Italy’s top movie award, a David di Donatello, as best actress in 1969. In Italy, she worked with some of the country’s top directors following the war, including Mario Monicelli, Luigi Comencini, Pietro Germi and Vittorio De Sica. Two of her more popular films at home were Comencini’s “Pane Amore e Fantasia” (“Bread, Love and Dreams”) in 1953, and the sequel a year later, “Pane Amore e Gelosia” (“Bread, Love and Jealousy”). Her male foil was Vittorio Gassman, one of Italy’s leading men on the screen. She was also photographed with Dharmendra and Zeenat Aman during the shooting of their film Shalimar that released in 1978.

The Liasons In middle age, Lollobrigida’s romance with a man 34 years her junior, Javier Rigau, from Barcelona, Spain, kept gossip pages buzzing for years. “I have always had a weakness for younger men because they are generous and have no complexes,” the actress told Spain’s “Hola” magazine. After more than 20 years of dating, in 2006, the then-79-year-old Lollobrigida announced that she would marry Rigau, but the wedding never happened. Her first marriage, to Milko Skofic, a Yugoslavia-born doctor, ended in divorce in 1971. The Rerise  After enjoying massive fame and fortune on celluloid by swaying the globe with her smoldering aura, her career began to dwindle. She didn’t. She was rock-solid in her belief and tried her hands in photo-journalism. She’s said to have  photographed names like Paul Newman, Salvador Dalí, Henry Kissinger, David Cassidy, Audrey Hepburn, Ella Fitzgerald, and the German national football team. She also managed to seize an exclusive interview with Fidel Castro, leader of Communist Cuba. The Tumultuous Personal Life In the last years of her life, Lollobrigida’s name more frequently appeared in articles by journalists covering Rome’s courts, not the glamour scene, as legal battles were waged over whether she had the mental competence to tend to her finances. On her website, Lollobrigida recalled how her family lost its house during the bombings of World War II and went to live in Rome. She studied sculpture and painting at a high school dedicated to the arts, while her two sisters worked as movie theater ushers to allow her to continue her studies. With added inputs from agencies Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook ,  Twitter  and Instagram