"Sex appeal is 50% what you've got and 50% what people think you've got."

Born Sofia Villani Scicolone she grew up in the slums of Pozzuoli, just outside Naples. From an early age she had ambitions of becoming an actress and as soon as she was old enough she entered beauty contests in order to get herself noticed. It proved to be a wise move because it was at one such contest that Italian film producer Carlo Ponti spotted her. He signed her to a contract and although 22 years her senior the two eventually married. She had a small role in the 1950 Federico Fellini film Variety Lights before achieving starring-role status at the age of 19 (in Aida, although her voice was overdubbed by diva Renata Tebaldi).

Many of the films she made were produced by Ponti and one of these, Two Women, released in 1960, won her a Best Actress Oscar -the first to be presented to a non-American actress in a foreign language film. By the end of the 50's Loren was already being mentioned in the same vein as Monroe and Bardot and became one of the major sex symbols of that, and the preceding decade. Like Monroe, Sophia Loren was often cast in light-hearted sex-comedies, and throughout the 60's starred in Hollywood movies alongside the likes of Cary Grant, John Wayne and Frank Sinatra. In 1962 she separated from her husband and the marriage was annulled to save Ponti from bigamy charges in Italy, but in 1966 they remarried. In 1982 she served 18 days in an Italian prison for tax evasion.

Sophia Loren has continued to work in films and on television where she starred in a 1980 adaptation of her autobiography, "Sophia: Living and Loving," In 1991 she received her second Academy Award, this one in recognition of her distinguished career. In 1995 the readers of Empire magazine chose her as of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history, charting at number 25.