(Valeri Macon / AFP / Getty Images / May 4, 2011) Actress Sophia Loren gets smooched by her two sons, composer Carlo Ponti Jr., left, and director Edoardo Ponti. |
Sophia Loren, photographed at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills on April 29, will be honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on May 4. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
By Susan King, Los Angeles Times:
May 4, 2011
Apparently Sophia Loren didn't get the memo that she is a septuagenarian and a grandmother because at 76 she is as stunning as when she first arrived in Hollywood more than 50 years ago.
Sitting on a comfy sofa in the lobby of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Samuel Goldwyn Theater, Loren remains the epitome of glamour and graciousness. Dressed in a red pantsuit with red boots, Loren is svelte with barely a line on her face. Her voice is as distinctively earthy, her accent as thickly Italian as ever — she even apologizes when she can only think of a certain word in her native tongue.
She's in town from her home in Switzerland for the sold-out "An Academy Tribute to Sophia Loren" on Wednesday evening at the Goldwyn Theater. The tribute to the Oscar-winner took her by surprise.
"I didn't expect it, really," says Loren. "It's wonderful, because I belong to Italian movies and, generally, we Italians, we don't get these wonderful, great, great honors, even though we deserve it sometimes!'"
But then again she's always felt embraced here. "America has always accepted me, even in the beginning when I came here for the first time," she recalls. "I was very young and they gave me a wonderful cocktail party. Louella Parsons and Elsa Maxwell and Jayne Mansfield were there. I will never forget those days. For me, Hollywood was a fairy tale, coming from where I came from, a little town. It was something that I never expected."