Gina Lollobrigida

Excerpt:

The camera has always loved Gina Lollobrigida. Her roles alongside the likes of Frank Sinatra and Yul Brynner cemented the actress's diva status, in Hollywood and her native Italy, during the 1950's and 60's.

Lollobrigida's focus for the last 50 years, though, has been mostly from the other side of the lens. A retrospective of Lollobrigida's photography career, now at the recently renovated Palazzo delle Esposizioni (Via Nazionale 194; 06-399-67-500), shows the breadth of her work. Taken in disparate locations, from New Delhi to Morocco, from Hollywood to Denver, the 250 images displayed in the Palazzo include intimate portraits of the powerful, the beautiful and the wretched.

"Gina Lollobrigida represented the Italian brand of womanhood for a whole generation. A strong and multi-talented lady, she is still one of the legends of world cinema.

"Born in Subiaco, the second of four daughters, Gina has memories of a very difficult childhood during World War II.

"Her film career began by chance when talent scouts were looking for potential actors among people out on the streets. Gina was discovered one day in front of the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, where she had won a scholarship and was studying sculpture and painting. It was Vittorio De Sica, firmly convinced of Gina's artistic potential, who persuaded her to take up a career in cinema.

She was featured on the cover of Time in 1955, when Mediterranean sex appeal was all the rage in American showbiz. The magazine quoted Humphrey Bogart as saying that Gina made Marilyn Monroe look like Shirley Temple.

She was directed by such greats as John Huston, Renato Castellani, Mario Monicelli, Luigi Comencini, Carol Reed, René Clair, Christian Jaque and Vittorio De Sica in over sixty films, sometimes acting in three different languages alongside stars like Humphrey Bogart, Alec Guinness, Gérard Philipe, Eduardo De Filippo, Vittorio Gassman, Yul Brynner, Sean Connery, Marcello Mastroianni, Frank Sinatra, Rock Hudson and Anthony Quinn....

"All through her career, however, Gina never abandoned her first loves: namely painting and sculpture. Her talent as a photographer has won her many prizes and a great deal of praise, and her works have been exhibited in many international museums. She has published six books of photographs and directed two documentaries, one on Indira Gandhi and the other on Fidel Castro."

(From Lollobrigida.com)

"Some women like to depend on a man; I don't want to depend on anybody. I just want my life to be based just on myself."

"A woman at 20 is like ice, at 30 she is warm and at 40 she is hot."

"I studied painting and sculpting at school and became an actress by mistake .... I've had many lovers and still have romances. I am very spoiled. All my life, I've had too many admirers."