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Luigia "Gina" LollobrigidaOMRI (4 July 1927 – 16 January 2023) was an Italian actress, model, and photojournalist. She was one of the highest-profile European actresses of the 1950s and 1960s, a period in which she was an international sex symbol. Dubbed "the most beautiful woman in the world", at the time of her death she was among the last surviving high-profile international actors from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema.
As her film career slowed, Lollobrigida established a second career as a photojournalist. In the 1970s she achieved a scoop by gaining access to Fidel Castro for an exclusive interview.
Lollobrigida continued as an active supporter of Italian and Italian-American causes, particularly the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF). In 2008 she received the NIAF Lifetime Achievement Award at the Foundation's Anniversary Gala. In 2013, she sold her jewellery collection and donated the nearly US$5 million from the sale to benefit stem-cell therapy research. She won the Henrietta Award at the 18th Golden Globe Awards. According to Italian newspapers, Gina Lollobrigida’s estimated net worth at her death was $215 million.
Youth
Luigia Lollobrigida was born in Subiaco, Lazio, about 64 kilometres (40 mi) from Rome, the daughter of a furniture maker and his wife. She had three sisters: Giuliana, Maria and Fernanda. After the end of World War II in 1945, the family moved to Rome, where Lollobrigida took singing lessons, did some modelling, and participated in several beauty contests, placing third in the 1947 Miss Italy contest. In 1946, she began appearing in Italian films in minor roles.
In 1950, Howard Hughes signed Lollobrigida on a preliminary seven-year contract to make three pictures a year. She refused the final terms of the contract, preferring to remain in Europe, and Hughes suspended her. Despite selling RKO Pictures in 1955, Hughes retained Lollobrigida's contract. The dispute prevented her from working in American movies filmed in the U.S. until 1959, but allowed for American productions shot in Europe, although Hughes often threatened legal action against the producers.
Her performance in the Italian romantic comedy Bread, Love and Dreams (Pane, amore e fantasia, 1953) led to its becoming a box-office success and her receiving a BAFTA nomination. Furthermore, she won a Nastro d'Argento award from the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists for her role in the picture. Lollobrigida appeared in The Wayward Wife (1953) and in Woman of Rome (1954). These were three of her most renowned Italian films, but she worked also in the French industry on such films as Fearless Little Soldier (Fanfan la Tulipe, 1952), Beauties of the Night (Les Belles de nuit, 1952), and Le Grand Jeu (1954).
In the mid-1980s, she guest starred in a multi-episode arc on the television series Falcon Crest as Francesca Gioberti, a role originally written for Sophia Loren, who had turned it down. For the role, she received a third Golden Globe nomination.[citation needed] She also had a supporting role in the 1985 television miniseries Deceptions, co-starring with Stefanie Powers.[citation needed] The following year, she appeared as a guest star in the TV series The Love Boat.
By the end of the 1970s, Lollobrigida had embarked on what she developed into a successful second career as a photographic journalist. She photographed, among others, Paul Newman, Salvador Dalí, Henry Kissinger, David Cassidy, Audrey Hepburn, Ella Fitzgerald, and the Germany national football team. In 1974 she managed to obtain an exclusive interview with Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Between 1972 and 1994 she published six collections of her photographs, including the 1973 title Italia Mia.
In 1949 Lollobrigida married a Slovenian physician, Milko Škofič. Their only child, Andrea Milko (Milko Škofič, Jr.), was born on 28 July 1957. Škofič gave up the practice of medicine to become her manager. In 1960, Lollobrigida moved from her native Italy to Toronto, with Škofič and their son. The couple meant to solve the legal situation of their son who was considered stateless by the Italian bureaucracy. The couple divorced in 1971.
In October 2006, at age 79, she announced to Spain's ¡Hola! magazine her engagement to a 45-year-old Spanish businessman, Javier Rigau y Rafols (Catalan: Javier Rigau i Ràfols).
They had met at a party in Monte Carlo in 1984 and had since become companions. The engagement was called off on 6 December 2006, reportedly because of the strain of intense media interest.
In 2006 Lollobrigida and Rigau signed a prenuptial agreement and married in Spain.
In January 2013, she started legal action against Rigau, claiming that her ex-boyfriend had staged a secret ceremony in which he "married" an imposter pretending to be her at a registry office in Barcelona. She said he intended to lay claim to her estate after her death. Lollobrigida accused Rigau of fraud, saying that he had earlier obtained the legal right to act on her behalf with a power of attorney, and carried out the plot to get extra power. "A while ago he convinced me to give him my power of attorney. He needed it for some legal affairs. But instead, I fear that he took advantage of the fact that I don't understand Spanish ... Who knows what he had me sign." In March 2017, she lost her court action, but subsequently said that she would appeal.
Lollobrigida retired from filming in 1997. She told PARADE in April 2000: "I studied painting and sculpting at school and became an actress by mistake ... I've had many lovers and still have romances. I am very spoiled. All my life, I've had too many admirers." After retirement she divided her time between her house on Via Appia Antica in Rome and a villa in Monte Carlo. After 2009, she refused visitors to her home.
In 2013, Lollobrigida sold her jewelry collection through Sotheby's. She donated nearly $5 million to benefit stem-cell therapy.
At the end of the 2010s, Andrea Piazzolla became Lollobrigida's main collaborator, general director and trustee of some Monegasque real estate and financial societies. In July 2020 he was charged for circumvention of an incapable person.
In 2021, the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation, at the request of her son, ruled that Lollobrigida should have a legal guardian appointed to manage her affairs and prevent predation. Although the court determined she was mentally capable, medical evidence had indicated that there was "a weakening in her correct perception of reality" and that she was in a state of "vulnerability".
Lollobrigida died at a clinic in Rome on 16 January 2023, at the age of 95. She is buried in her birthplace, Subiaco, Lazio.
Lost from 1958 until 1986, when it turned up in a storage unit of the Ritz Hotel, Paris, where director Orson Welles had left the only copy. Upon rediscovery, it was screened once at the 1986 Venice Film Festival, and once on German television, before Lollobrigida (who had seen the Venice screening) took legal action to have it banned, due to its unflattering portrayal of her as an ambitious young star.
^According to the movie's credits, "Tutte le canzioni del film e le arie della Tosca sono state cantate da Gina Lollobrigida" ("All the songs in the film and the arias from Tosca were sung by Gina Lollobrigida")
^Buckley, Réka C. V. (2000). "National Body: Gina Lollobrigida and the cult of the star in the 1950s". Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. 20 (4): 527–547. doi:10.1080/713669741. S2CID193186413.
^"È morta Gina Lollobrigida, aveva 95 anni" [Gina Lollobrigida dead, she was 95 years old]. Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata. 16 January 2023. Archived from the original on 16 January 2023. Retrieved 16 January 2023.
^Lollobrigida, Gina; Nakpil, Carmen Guerrero (1976). "The Philippines". AbeBooks. Sarima. Archived from the original on 21 January 2023. Retrieved 21 January 2023.