The actress Sophia Loren was elected “Personality of the Year 2024” by the Italian encyclopedia Treccani, which considers her “an ultimate feminine symbol”.
In a text written by Gianluca Nicoletti for Treccani's Book of the Year 2024, the world cinema star, currently with 90 years of life, was cited as “a model of feminine Italianness in all its dizzying splendor, as well as in its fragility.
The most famous symbol of the Italian woman in the world, never tarnished and never surpassed by the peremptory change in aesthetic fashions.”
From humble origins, “to such an extent that her memory of her mother begging to feed her remained etched in her mind”, as Treccani recalled, Loren found in cinema a great opportunity to survive in post-fascist Italy, later transforming her into a myth.
On the big screen, the star played an adulterous woman (“The Gold of Naples”, 1954), at a time when adultery was a crime, as a former prostitute (“Marriage Italian Style”, 1964), but also as a mother, which in the tragic story of “Two Women” (1960), earned her an Oscar Award.
In real life, Loren was married to Carlo Ponti (1912-2007), with whom she lived an eternal love story full of gossip and shadows, but which gave her two children.
In 1982, the diva boarded a plane in Switzerland that took her to Rome. She disembarked with a dazzling smile and, clutching a bouquet of flowers, was arrested for tax evasion. She served 17 days in prison. In 2013, the Court of Cassation declared her innocent. (Handle)
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