Anita Ekberg

The Invention of a Body

Anita Ekberg arrived in the United States in 1951 after winning the Miss Sweden pageant without speaking a word of English. Howard Hughes wanted her on his payroll of future stars and proposed to her almost as soon as she stepped off the plane. She said no, because she wasn't looking for a husband with a private jet, but for a paycheck of her own.

In her early years in California, Universal Pictures used her as a visual draw in low-budget comedies. She worked with Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin in Artists and Models during 1955. There she showed a comedic rhythm that no one in the Hollywood offices really wanted to exploit.

The myth consumed the actress before her time.

She won a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer in 1956 for her role in Blood Alley alongside John Wayne. But the American film industry only saw in her a perfect bone structure and curves that defied the censors of the era. That typecasting pushed her to cross the ocean back home and try her luck at Cinecittà Studios.

Rome's Cold Water

In 1960 Federico Fellini called her to shoot a scene that would change the history of cinema. The night bath in the Trevi Fountain for La Dolce Vita was filmed over a week in January in freezing temperatures. Marcello Mastroianni needed a bottle of vodka and a wetsuit under her clothes to endure the cold.

Ekberg stayed under the water spray for hours without complaining even once.

That shoot in Rome made her the most desired woman on the planet, but it also put a noose around her professional neck. After the film's release, no one called her anymore to play nuanced characters. They only wanted her to embody blonde temptation in productions such as Boccaccio 70 from 1962.

But the money didn't last forever, and bad investments began to take their toll.

She married and divorced twice. Her marriages to Anthony Steel and Rik Van Nutter were tabloid fodder and ended in exhausting legal battles. She felt at home in Italy, but the Italian film industry is treacherous when actresses reach their forties.

The Price of Loneliness

During the seventies, her screen presence became marginal. She appeared in B movies and low-budget European productions that did no justice to her talent. In 1987, Fellini brought her back for Intervista, where she played herself in a cruel exercise in nostalgia.

The film industry forgot her long before the photographers did.

In 2011, Ekberg's financial situation was critical after a fire destroyed her home in Rome. The actress had to request financial aid from the Fellini Foundation because she could not afford to stay in a retirement home. She was living on less than a thousand euros a month, in utter precarity.

She spent her final months confined to a wheelchair after breaking her hip in a fall at home. Anita Ekberg died on the morning of January 11, 2015 at a clinic in Rocca di Papa. Her estate was divided between distant cousins in Sweden, with whom she had barely any contact, and a local animal welfare association.