Cannes Film Festival 1955

Sophia Loren had her breakout moment at 20 years old when she went to Cannes to support Vittorio De Sica’s The Gold of Naples, one of her earliest starring roles, and quickly realized she was the most photographed person at the festival that year

Jayne Mansfield 1957

They didn’t know each other at all, but Loren and bombshell actress Jayne Mansfield will always be cosmically bonded by this legendary photo.

Houseboat 1958

Cary Grant and Loren had begun a romance while filming 1957’s The Pride and the Passion.  Though she declined his proposal for marriage, he continued to woo her during the making of this comedy.

Elvis Presley 1958

”I didn’t know Elvis at all, but we were both making films at Paramount and eating in the cafeteria and we both thought, ‘Oh, I want to meet you.’ And so I sat in his lap and we laughed like two kids.

Carlo Ponti 1961

Photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt, who shot Loren for seven LIFE magazine covers, snapped this photo of the actress playfully berating her film producer husband.

El Cid 1961

Charlton Heston said that Loren never complained about the frigid weather and skimpy wardrobe she endured while making this costume epic.

Two Woman 1961

Loren was just 25 when she portrayed a shopkeeper enduring the horrors of World War II with her adolescent daughter in Vittorio De Sica’s landmark drama.

Oscar Glow 1962

”I look very happy next to my Oscar, no?” says Loren. ”And with the cigarette in my hand, of course, even though I don’t smoke. I never smoked.

At Home, with Oscar 1962

She celebrated her Best Actress win for Two Women with her mother, Romilda (center), and sister, Maria (right). ”We’re in Rome, just talking in bed together, in the house I bought with the first money I received.”

Marcello Mastroianni

”We did 14 films together,” says Loren of Mastroianni, her most beloved and popular costar, who died in 1996.

”We were in comedies like Too Bad She’s Bad and Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (top), then later the people accepted us in dramas like Marriage, Italian Style and A Special Day

Arabesque 1966

In 1963, Loren handed Gregory Peck his Academy Award for To Kill a Mockingbird. But on the set of this thriller, the patrician gentleman didn’t immediately warm to his bighearted Italian costar.

Mamma Sofia 1969

After a difficult pregnancy, which included estrogen shots and bed rest, Loren gave birth in Geneva to her first son, Carlo, in December 1968.

Her own Story 1980

In this dramatized television film about her life, Loren played her own mother, who gave birth to Sophia in a home for unwed mothers after becoming pregnant by a man who claimed to be a film producer.

Grumpier Old Men 1995

In the sequel to the popular Jack Lemmon-Walter Matthau comedy, Loren played Matthau’s saucy love interest. ”Oh Walter, that beautiful man,” she sighs. ”Watching Walter and Jack together was beautiful too.

Nine 2009

”I was very emotional when I did this scene,” says Loren, who made a cameo in this musical as the mother of movie director Guido (played by Daniel Day-Lewis). ”And it was because I was sharing the screen with the best actor in the world.