Gina Lollobrigida, a leading actress in Italian cinema, died yesterday at the age of 95. Last September she was discharged from a clinic in Rome after a fall in her house that had caused a femur fracture for which she had also undergone surgery. At the time, no cause of death was known, but she was not reported to be ill. Four years ago, Gina had ended up in the hospital for another domestic accident, for which she had been hospitalized at the Sant'Eugenio hospital, very close to her villa on the ancient Appian Way. The femur fracture had occurred, instead, two weeks after the electoral session of September 25, in which Gina Lollobrigida was a candidate for Latina in the single-member constituency of the Senate and, in other constituencies, in the proportional multi-member for the list "Italia sovrana e popolare" that brought together several parties of the radical left.
Gina Lollobrigida was born in Subiaco, in the province of Rome, on July 4, 1927, and she had a long artistic career, directed by internationally renowned Italian directors such as Vittorio De Sica, Mario Monicelli and Pietro Gelmi. Her debut was as a designer and photo-novelist, but it was her participation in the Miss Italy contest, in which she placed third, that gave her the opportunity to make herself known to the general public and noticed by many directors and producers of the time. Among the awards she received during her career, she won seven David of Donatello awards, made over sixty films, including "The most beautiful woman in the world", "Imperial Venus" and "Buona sera, Mrs. Campbell". Overseas Gina won the Golden Globe in 1961 with "Come back in September", alongside Rock Hudson. Her fame, however, is linked to the new Italian cinema of neorealism: she worked with Pietro Gelmi ("Four ways out") and with Carlo Lizzani ("Danger! Banditi!"), in the mid-20th century, embodying the figure of the passionate and strong popular woman, and refining her acting skills as a self-taught.
The first great success came in France, however, acting in "Fanfan the Tulipe" with Gérard Philipe in 1952. Subsequently, she would star in the films of René Clair, Alessandro Blasetti, Mario Monicelli and Steno, Mario Soldati, which finally give her the deserved popularity also in Italy, which is consecrated by the great success "Bread love and fantasy" by Luigi Comencini (1953) and by the popular sequel, always in couple with Vittorio De Sica. It is precisely thanks to that role that she was known, in Italy and in the world, as "La Bersagliera". In January 1949, on Mount Terminillo in Rieti, Gina Lollobrigida married the Slovenian doctor Milko Škofič, who served among the refugees temporarily housed in Cinecittà. In July 1957 the two had a son, Andrea Milko, who gave them a grandson, Dimitri, born in 1994. In 1971 Gina divorced her husband, who had already begun a relationship with Austrian opera singer Ute de Vargas and from whom she had lived apart for at least five years.
In 2006, in an interview with the Spanish magazine ¡Hola!, Gina Lollobrigida announced her intention to marry businessman Javier Rigau, who was 34 years younger than her, after a relationship kept secret for more than twenty years. The news became a scandal when Rigau declared a date with Lollobrigida as early as 1976, when he was only 15 years old. After the scandal broke, the businessman declared the engagement to be over with a statement from his lawyer. Gina Lollobrigida starred in 2011 in the documentary “Schuberth - L’atelier della dolce vita” (together with Sofia Loren), and since 1999 she had been a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). In homage to her proverbial "curves", the French use the expression “lollobrigidien” to indicate a road or a height full of curves. In 2016 she received the David of Donatello award for her career. Gina Lollobrigida's last years were marked by sad judicial events: since 2021 the court had appointed a support administrator for the protection of her assets. (Photo Iberia)
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