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Italian film star ‘ Lollo’ dies aged 95
ITALIAN film star Gina Lollobrigida has died at the age of 95. Her agent, Paola Comin, said the actress died in Rome yesterday. Lollobrigida achieved international stardom during the 1950s and was dubbed “the most beautiful woman in the world”, after the title of one her movies in 1955.
Besides that movie, her career highlights included Golden Globewinner 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, for which she won Italy’s top movie award, a David di Donatello, as best actress in 1969.
Lollobrigida also was an accomplished painter and photographer, and she eventually essentially dropped film for the fine arts.
The former actress had surgery in September to repair a thigh bone broken in a fall. She returned home and said that she had quickly resumed walking.
A drawn portrait of the diva graced a 1954 cover of Time magazine, which, in an article about Italian movie- making, likened her to a goddess.
“Lollo”, as she was lovingly nicknamed by Italians, began making movies in Italy just after the end of the Second World War, as the country began to promote on the big screen a stereotypical concept of Mediterranean beauty as buxom and brunette. She worked with some of the country’s top directors following the war, including Mario Monicelli, Luigi Comencini and Pietro Germi.
Lollobrigida was an accomplished sculptor, painter and photographer. She was born on July 4, 1927, in Subiaco, a picturesque hill town near Rome.