In a phone interview from her home in Geneva, Loren spoke about aging gracefully, taking direction from her son and some of her favorite roles. – fiancee-ing with Carlo. A Co-Production of Daphne Productions, Inc, and WNET/131977 Daphne Productions, Inc.Extra material for the "A Special Day" DVD/bluray In a career that spans 70 years, Sophia's Loren performance in "The Life Ahead" is a standout. Be strong. Sophia Loren in 1950, when she entered the Miss Italia beauty pageant. “I think maybe she was afraid I would get into a world where I didn’t belong,” she says. She was against new things. “I was allowed to be a part of it, never in a good way, never like mother and daughter.”. The evidence suggests that she made the right choice. Loren played Cesira: widowed shopkeeper, embattled mother, a symbol of Italian fortitude and resilience. Ponti defended her against the Hollywood executives who insisted that her nose was too large and her lips were too full and who, in marketing her as “the Italian Marilyn Monroe”, somehow managed to do a disservice to both actors. Academy Award-winning screen legend Sophia Loren has been known for decades as one of Hollywood's classic glamorous actresses. Now, at 86, her image of beauty has changed over time, she told correspondent Seth Doane in an interview for "CBS Sunday Morning," to be broadcast November 8. The place made me think of John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row but it is also not dissimilar to Loren’s hometown of Pozzuoli, near Naples. Back then, we didn’t have anything. My life since we met … my life was with him. “But Pozzuoli is in the past. At some point during filming she realised she was channelling Romilda. So Romilda stayed in Naples and it was Sophia who achieved lift-off. Sophia Loren in Vittorio De Sica’s Two Women, 1960, alongside co-star Eleanora Brown. How she would cope if it did. Loren with Cary Grant in their 1957 film The Pride and the Passion. Every major actor carries with them the trace of their earlier films or their personal history. The 86-year-old, star of the Netflix drama The Life Ahead, looks back at her own life, from the squalor of wartime Naples to the glamour of international fame, Last modified on Mon 9 Nov 2020 12.23 GMT. Alain Elkann Interviews Sophia Loren world famous Italian actress in Geneva home where awards, an Oscar, six David di Donatello Awards, the Gold Bear of Berlin, Telegatto, German, Japanese, the Golden Globe and others are on display. “Her roots run very deep. Academy Award-winning screen legend Sophia Loren has been known for decades as one of Hollywood's classic glamorous actresses. Watch CBS News anytime, anywhere with the our 24/7 digital news network. I am intrigued by Loren’s fleeting Hollywood era in the late 1950s, as a contracted player at Paramount Pictures. © 2020 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. Sophia Loren: 'The body changes. “She approaches every movie like her first. I wanted reasons. She won a Greta Garbo lookalike competition and might have gone to the US to work as Garbo’s body double. Debuting this week on Netflix, it is Loren's first film … An amateur psychologist might be tempted to view Loren’s career as a realisation of her mother’s dashed dreams. Ponti is amused, but Loren is borderline exasperated, pining for the old pomp and ceremony. Sophia Loren kam am 20. But in essence, at heart, it is a luxurious showcase for the 86-year-old Sophia Loren, who strides through the action with her grey hair untethered and her hoop earrings swinging; a Mother Courage for the ages, bruised but unbowed. Read all the books first and then we can talk.”. But, as with most dreams, it was chaotic, confusing and not altogether to be trusted. “Well, yes,” he says. Ponti chips in. Loren's new memoir talks about her journey from poverty in Italy to international film stardom. "My mother approaches every movie like it was her first," Ponti said, adding she also doubts herself: "Every day. She thought I would never be successful, and that was wrong, she was wrong. I wanted answers.” She gives an angry shrug: “But I got nowhere.”, At the 1950 Miss Italia beauty pageant, the 15-year-old first met Carlo Ponti, a film producer who was only two years younger than her mother (they became lovers four years later). Isabella Rossellini interviews Sophia Loren and her director son Edoardo Ponti. "It was time for me to start, to start at my age, which I'm not going to tell you how old I am, and you may know it already, but it's fun," Loren says. We could have died every night.”. She plays a Holocaust survivor who cares for the kids of sex workers. The image keeps freezing. The plan had been to premiere the picture in Rome. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation. But still my life was with Carlo, not with Cary Grant.”, “My mother has always been very close to her roots,” Ponti says. Sometimes you make mistakes and sometimes you win.’ I made some mistakes,” she shrugs. This feels like the crossroads, her moment of flux. Interview. He was a man whose emotional language she understood.”, Loren has always defined herself as a Neapolitan first and an Italian second. “I’m very grateful she went back to Italy and married my father. But that is getting the wrong end of the stick. It is the film that, six decades on, she still considers her favourite, the one that mapped out the ground and pointed the way forward. by Stephanie Eckardt. By Maureen Lee Lenker What he most remembers about Romilda was her resilience, her combination of fragility and strength. Books and books of history. In 1962, she won the best actress Oscar for her turn in the potent wartime drama La Ciociara (Two Women), shot in 1960 by the neorealist director Vittorio De Sica. September 1934 zur Welt und wuchs in Neapel auf. A vitality I remember even when she was 80. But it was always a big maybe. It lacks exoticism and menace. She feels that, in hindsight, her harsh early years were a blessing in disguise. “She had a dignity in the way she carried herself. “No, no, no,” says Loren, briefly exasperated all over again. But it's part of her process – and it's beautiful, because after 60 years of doing this, she still approaches it with the same anxiety, the same spontaneity, the same passion as if it were her first film.". Every moment. Sophia Loren Wants to Go On Forever. Loren with the best actress Oscar she won in 1962 for La Ciociara (Two Women). So I do understand the choice of going back to my father, because he represented everything she knew, the country she loved. She had two kids and no money. It’s about music and dance. “Things don’t change too much,” she says. And it was Ponti who helped plot her trajectory, so that she landed on the scene like some visitor from another planet; comically gorgeous and dizzyingly versatile, as comfortable in heated melodrama as she was in freewheeling light comedy. Loren talked with Doane about acting, her career, and being directed by her son. Sophia Loren captured the hearts of an entire generation with her distinctive good looks and her passionate performances on screen. But maybe he’s going to read your interview and maybe he’s going to start again. It is widely assumed that Peter Sarstedt’s 1960s hit single Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)? Then a further thought hits her. That’s how, back in 1962, Loren became the first actor to win an Academy Award for a … I wanted to understand what it was like to live like he did. Sophia Loren Interview on CBS Sunday Morning - 2009 - YouTube Her faithless middle-class lover – the father of her daughters – had all but cut her loose. Photographed by Edoardo Ponti. Again, she is having none of it. Very much so. Sophia Loren returned this past year with “The Life Ahead,” her first role in a film since 2009.The actress plays Madame Rosa, a Holocaust survivor who … Sophia Loren talks to Ian Woodward about Peter Sellars, Richard Burton and overcoming her shyness on screen Sat 29 Aug 2015 00.30 EDT Last … The mind does not' Xan Brooks. Now Playing: Still Sexy After All These Years Now Playing: Beloved cafeteria worker becomes US citizen The film is directed by her son, Edoardo Ponti. I lived there during the war, so it’s impossible to compare. But at that time I was – how you say? “Yes, well, maybe sometimes. Ponti also opens up about why he chose his mother for the role, and about directing her in the film. “I mean, yes, I would have liked to learn English and know people in America. “What car?” she demands. Edoardo tells me that, growing up, he never saw his parents as a powerhouse couple, “Honestly, it was never about stardom or glamour. Aber was machen die Diven von früher heute? And she didn’t believe in dreams.”, The problem, perhaps, was that Loren was so gung-ho in the pursuit of stardom that her mother started to fear for her daughter’s safety. “I don’t like the word protector,” she says. "It's not important, the appearance – it's important maybe in films," Loren told Doane. Ponti, her mentor, was briefly out of the picture and she had a relationship with Cary Grant that sparked on the set of The Pride and the Passion and sputtered during the filming of the 1958 romcom Houseboat. Be sure to follow us at cbssundaymorning.com, and on Twitter (@CBSSunday), Facebook, and Instagram (#CBSSundayMorning). “But still I won.”, The Life Ahead is on Netflix from 13 November, Sophia Loren: 'The body changes. If anything, she says, it was her father not her mother who was the real motivation. (raggedy children; the backstreets of Naples) was about Loren, despite Sarstedt swearing blind that it wasn’t. “Not at first. Filmproduzent Carlo Ponti, ihr späterer Ehemann, entdeckte die 16-Jährige bei einem Schönheitswettbewerb und begann ihre Karriere zu fördern. I ask what the difference is and she laughs at my ignorance and says it would take too long to explain. It is not hard to join the dots from Cesira, through Filumena in Marriage Italian Style, Giovanna in Sunflower, all the way to the redoubtable Madame Rosa in The Life Ahead. The way Loren tells it, Hollywood was a mere detour, a nice little adventure, never intended to last. It pales when compared to the movie’s other big beast. Her mother, Romilda Villani, was an aspiring actor herself. Everything was against us. "But, it's what you have to give inside of yourself, your soul, your everything; the way you believe in things, the way you are with your family, the way you are with your friends … that's life, really. After a decade away from acting, Loren is back with "The Life Ahead," a film launching on Netflix November 13. Getty Images Romilda became involved with construction engineer Riccardo Scicolone, father to Sophia and her younger sister Maria. "It's fun. Europe provided more fertile ground for her skills. And marriage and children: that was my dream as well.”, I feel we could use her son’s thoughts at this point. I suggest that her mother must have been cock-a-hoop. In The Life Ahead, Loren plays Madame Rosa as an exhausted survivor. In a new interview Sophia Loren clarifies that Cary Grant never actually proposed while filming The Pride and the Passion in 1957. She pulls a face. The woman was his grandmother; he has his own perspective. It's wonderful.". It occurs that Loren’s impoverished upbringing – as an illegitimate child in war-torn Catholic Italy – is as much a part of her legend as the fame and fortune that came later, so much so that it is sometimes difficult to separate the fiction from the fact. “It was more that he believed in me.”. Directed by her son, Edoardo Ponti, the film mines the actor’s back catalogue, riffs off her colourful life story and stirs memories of the combative characters she played in her heyday, in films such as Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963) and Marriage Italian Style (1964). Older stars like Sophia Loren are taking it all off for the cameras. “I wanted to be able to walk into the kind of places my father walked into. He is integral to the story. She talks of Mastroianni, Cary Grant, Charlie Chaplin and favourite directors, Ettore Scola, Lina Wertmuller, Alessandro Blasetti. The Zoom connection is spotty. Whatever came next could only count as an improvement. Stream CBSN live or on demand for FREE on your TV, computer, tablet, or smartphone. Sophia Loren is such a proud mum in incredibly rare interview about family life Sophia Loren opens up about her children in very rare interview Anthem of … Just keep going and try. She and Ponti remained together until his death in 2007. Her son translates the question and she directs her answer to him. “My mother’s feelings were all closed off inside herself,” she explains. How she would cope if it didn’t happen. Nach ersten Hauptrollen in ihrer Heimat ging Loren 1957 nach Hollywood. I have also read that Loren’s mother used to siphon water from the car radiator, just so she was able to give her starving daughter a drink. So here was the dream; big as life, full of money. She is decisive, imperious, a natural-born thoroughbred with her eye on the prize. Sophia Loren makes a triumphant return to cinema in The Life Ahead The legendary actress gives her first U.S. interview about her long-awaited new film. Romain Gary’s source novel set the tale in Paris. But it is too skimpy and tame. “Sophia for ever,” she says with a smile. The CGI lioness that materialises at intervals in the Netflix drama The Life Ahead is a sad and sorry-looking thing. Every take. Sophia Loren, 86, reveals her biggest regret: 'That was the dream of my life' The Italian actress is set to star in the upcoming Netflix feature film 'The Life Ahead' Ponti, though, relocates it to the Adriatic port city of Bari, which he depicts as a rambunctious hurly-burly of Muslims and Jews, saints and sinners, and migrants of all stripes. Sophia Loren, photographed by her son Edoardo Ponti, in her house in Geneva in 2020. he CGI lioness that materialises at intervals in the Netflix drama. ET] and CBS All Access, and is available on cbs.com and On Demand. What was it that made her choose Italy over Hollywood, Ponti over Grant? Today, over Zoom, she doesn’t come across as your average cobbler. Sophia Loren says role as Madame Rosa in The Life Ahead was irresistible to lure her back to the screen. The Academy Award-winner, starring in the new Netflix film "The Life Ahead," tells "CBS Sunday Morning" that it's "what you have to give inside of yourself" that makes for a "good life.". It has a glossy gold coat and a twitching gold tail and brings a dose of magic realism to an otherwise gritty 21st-century tale. She is still big; it’s just the pictures that got small. That's a good life.". In her native Italy she first began acting in the early 1950s and by 1956 she had a contract with Paramount. Im Interview erzählt Kinolegende Sophia Loren, warum sie nach einem Jahrzehnt Abwesenheit jetzt im Drama "Du hast das Leben vor dir" vor die Kamera zurückkehrt. But events made such a move impossible. Sophia Loren as Madame Rosa in the Netflix drama The Life Ahead. Zur Person: Sophia Loren. Sophia Loren, die Grande Dame des italienischen Kinos, erzählt im Interview mit GALA von den Highlights ihrer Karriere und den Nachteilen, immer und überall die Diva zu sein. 03.01.21. To her, the life that I wanted, it was all a dream. Now, at 86, her image of … Her life turned around and caught her by surprise. I ask if she has ever felt lost, or beset by self-doubt, and she considers the question for all of two seconds. And this has to be at least part intentional. Sophia Loren: In Her Own Words The cinema legend is back in … Sofia Villani Scicolone Dame Grand Cross OMRI (Italian: [soˈfiːa vilˈlaːni ʃʃikoˈloːne]; born 20 September 1934), known professionally as Sophia Loren (/ l ə ˈ r ɛ n /; Italian: ) is an Italian actress.She was named by the American Film Institute as the 21st greatest female star of Classic Hollywood Cinema. Again, it is tempting to regard Ponti as the adult protector she craved. Later she started to believe that I could maybe be somebody. She says acting is her life, is all that she knows, and that therefore she sees no particular reason to quit. Those are the qualities that Loren shared with Romilda. “We didn’t have a car.”. Personally, too, the return to her homeland proved fruitful.