Italian Favourites / Claudia Cardinale & Sophia Loren

 

Sophia Loren

Italian Favourites – Claudia Cardinale & Sophia Loren

August 30, 2011 by TidiousTed

Claudia Cardinale  is an Italian Tunisian actress, and has appeared in some of the most prominent European films of the 1960s and 1970s. The majority of Cardinale’s films have been either Italian or French. She was also an iconic sex symbol of the 1960s.Claudia Cardinale was born Claude Joséphine Rose Cardinale in La Goulette, an Italian Tunisian neighbourhood of Tunis. Her mother, Yolande Greco, was born in Tunisia to Italian emigrants from Trapani, Italy. Her father was an Italian railway worker, born in Gela, Italy. Like many Italian Tunisians, her native languages were Tunisian Arabic, French, and the Sicilian language of her parents. She developed her skill in speaking Italian as a teenager, as she pursued her acting

Loren was born in the Clinica Regina Margherita in Rome, daughter of Romilda Villani (1914–1991) and Riccardo Scicolone, a construction engineer. Scicolone refused to marry Villani, leaving her, a piano teacher and aspiring actress, without support. Loren’s parents had another child together, her sister Anna Maria Villani Scicolone, in 1938. Loren has two younger paternal half-brothers, Giuliano and Giuseppe. Romilda, Loren, and Maria lived with Loren’s grandmother in Pozzuoli, near Naples, to survive.

During World War II, the harbour and munitions plant in Pozzuoli was a frequent bombing target of the Allies. During one raid, as Loren ran to the shelter, she was struck by shrapnel and wounded in the chin. After that, the family moved to Naples, where they were taken in by distant relatives.

After the war, Loren and her family returned to Pozzuoli. Grandmother Luisa opened a pub in their living room, selling homemade cherry liquor. Villani played the piano, Maria sang and Loren waited on tables and washed dishes. The place was very popular with the American GIs stationed nearby.

When she was 14 years old, Loren entered a beauty contest in Naples and, while not winning, was selected as one of the finalists. Later she enrolled in acting class and was selected as an extra in Mervyn LeRoy’s 1951 film Quo Vadis, launching her career as a motion picture actress. She eventually for 1952’s La Favorita, her first larger role, Ponti changed her name to Sophia Loren.

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