Sophia Loren's Life in Photos

Celebrate the Italian icon's 89th birthday on Sept. 20, 2023, with a look back on her storied life

Raised by a single mom in a tiny town outside of Naples, Italy, Sophia Loren learned how to walk a red carpet from her mother, Romilda Villani. "She was the one who wore high heels, walked with her back straight, head upright," Loren recalled to PEOPLE in 2009. "She used to say, 'I'm the real Sophia Loren!' "

The Sophia Loren the rest of the world knows sizzled in films like Houseboat and Marriage, Italian Style and more recently, Nine and The Life Ahead. She's lived quite the life, too, turning down a marriage proposal from Cary Grant, working with Elvis and growing a family with her husband, the late producer Carlo Ponti.

Here, as the silver screen icon celebrates her 89th birthday, take a look at her life in pictures.

Sophia Loren's Early Years

Born in Rome, Italy, on Sept. 20, 1934, Loren finished as a finalist in the Miss Italia 1950 contest, and later enrolled in acting classes. She soon landed a bit part as an extra in Mervyn LeRoy’s Quo Vadis, which launched her career as a professional actress.

Sophia Loren in 1959

Before rising to international fame after signing a five-picture contract with Paramount Pictures in 1958, she worked on a series of Italian films.

By 1960, she was starring in multiple movies a year, sharing the screen with Angela Lansbury, Clark Gable, Charlton Heston and more.

Sophia Loren in 'Two Women'

"I was 25 when I did Two Women. The character was so powerful," Loren recalled to PEOPLE in 2009 of her star turn, a dramatic and devastating World War II film. "I didn't need to think about it. Even though I was little during the War, I had lived it."

Sophia Loren Wins an Oscar

Her leading role in Two Women gave Loren her lone Oscar in 1962; she was nominated once again in 1965 for Marriage Italian Style and received an honorary Oscar in 1991.

Loren famously didn't attend the 1962 ceremony. "I thought, if they do give it to me, I'm going to faint among the audience," she told PEOPLE in 2001. "So it's better to faint at home."

She has won five Golden Globe Awards in her time — including the coveted Cecil B. DeMille Award — and one Grammy, best spoken word album for children for 2004's Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf/Beintus: Wolf Tracks.

Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni

Loren costarred with Marcello Mastroianni in more than a dozen films. She said the two "had chemistry; we didn't know why. But I was in love with my husband, he was in love with his wife."

Sophia Loren and Cary Grant

"I was very fond of Cary, but we were not made for each other," Loren told PEOPLE of Houseboat and The Pride and the Passion costar Grant, who once proposed. "Leave my mother, my sister, to follow a man to another part of the world? I couldn't."

Sophia Loren in 1965

In her heyday, Loren was as known for her acting as she was for her looks.

"Sex appeal is 50 percent what you've got and 50 percent what people think you've got," she once said.

Sophia Loren's Marriage and Children

In 1966, Loren wed producer Carlo Ponti, with whom she had two sons, Carlo Jr., now 54, and Edoardo, now 50.

In 1969, Loren and Ponti introduced their first child to the press in a slightly unconventional way.

"I think this was about a week after Carlo Jr. was born," Loren recalled to PEOPLE of the photo above. "There were so many photographers that we could not give it exclusive to one. So the doctor said, 'We have a room where we operate, and there's a balcony all around. You can come in with the child and they can take pictures.' "

Sophia Loren and Her Family

Remembering this moment in a 2009 interview with PEOPLE, Loren shared, "We were in France here, in Carlo's office in Paris. It was a very leisurely afternoon, playing together."

Carlo died in 2007. "I miss him a lot," Loren told PEOPLE in 2009. "Sometimes I feel so lonely. It's not true that when time goes by, [pain] heals."

The pair met at a beauty contest; at the time, "he had a wife, two children," Loren recalled. "I didn't think it would happen. Little by little I knew he was the right person for me."

Sophia Loren's Sons

Carlo Jr. "is a conductor and does very well," Loren told PEOPLE. "He's a little bit like me: shy, keeps things inside, laughs, is funny. Edoardo is like my sister: outgoing, sings very well and wants to be a director. And I love my grandchildren!"

Carlo Jr. is married to musician Andrea Meszaros, and Edoardo is married to actress Sasha Alexander.

Sophia Loren in 2002

Loren retreated from the spotlight for some time to raise her sons, though was never far from the screen, taking roles in films like Grumpier Old Men and even a TV movie about her own life, Sophia Loren: Her Own Story.

Sophia Loren in 'Nine'

Loren received her first and only Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for Nine in 2010, alongside her star-studded cast. "It was a joy for me," she said of filming. "A type of film that I've never done before. It was really like a festa. Oh yes, I enjoyed singing, but this was really hard physically and also mentally sometimes."

Sophia Loren in 2019

Slowing down her work schedule, Loren made a splash in son Edoardo's 2020 project, The Life Ahead.

"I’m a perfectionist, but so is he," she told the New York Times that year. "Edoardo gives me security. He also never gives up until I give him my very best. He doesn’t settle for anything less than that, and he knows exactly what buttons to push to get something out of me. When Edoardo says 'This is it' after we film a scene, I know that my performance is exactly what he was waiting for. That’s a wonderful feeling for an actress, because you are sure of what you’re doing."

Sophia Loren Now

Though she stayed out of the public eye during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Loren stepped out in October 2022 to open her namesake restaurant in Milan.

“When you are 20 years old, you don’t think that you will turn 80, but when you do, you still can’t believe it,” the Oscar winner told PEOPLE in 2016. “My God, so many years went by, wow!"

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