Gina Lollobrigida

The Business of Being the Most Beautiful Woman

Luigina Lollobrigida arrived in Rome at twenty with empty pockets to study Fine Arts. In 1947, she placed third in the Miss Italia pageant. That defeat to Lucia Bosé was actually her best advertising contract and the start of a career no one could stop.

It was the start of a national obsession.

Producer Howard Hughes brought her to Hollywood with an exclusive contract, which she signed without speaking much English. She spent weeks locked in a luxury hotel under constant surveillance and decided to break the deal and return to Europe immediately. Hughes never forgave her and blocked her entry into the major American studios for almost seven years.

In 1952, she shot Fanfan the Tulip, and French cinema fell under the spell of her physical presence. But it was Pane, amore e fantasia in 1953 that sent her salary soaring to 100,000 dollars per film. That sum was an unreachable fortune for any other European actress of the time, and it placed her above her male colleagues.

Her public image was built on a rivalry manufactured by the press with Sophia Loren. Italian newspapers fueled a war of curves and contracts for decades that benefited both at the box office worldwide. But Gina always preferred absolute control over the glow of the red carpet.

She ran the set.

In 1956 she starred in Notre-Dame de Paris, and her performance as Esmeralda set the visual standard for the character for generations to come. She worked with directors of the caliber of John Huston on Beat the Devil, but always kept a cautious distance from the California studio system. She preferred the freedom of shoots at Cinecittà.

Cameras and Shock Politics

When interesting roles started to dry up, she decided not to sit waiting by the phone at her villa on the Via Appia. In 1974, she landed an exclusive interview with Fidel Castro after spending twelve days in Cuba with her photography team. That report proved her eye behind the lens was as sharp as her profile in front of the cameras.

She sold more than 60,000 copies of her photography books and exhibited her bronze sculptures in cities such as Moscow and Seville. Her move from actress to visual artist was not a retiree's whim but a vital need for expression that filled the second half of her life. For her, art was a matter of volume and space.

Power was never foreign to her.

In 1999 she ran for the European Parliament, and in 2022 she tried again for the Italian Senate at age 95. She didn't win a seat either time, but her political activity generated constant media buzz in Italy. Her final years were marked by legal battles with her own son over the management of her estate.

She died on January 16, 2023 in a Rome clinic after a femur fracture complicated her overall health. Her will divided an estimated fortune of 10 million euros equally between her son Andrea Milko Skofic and her personal assistant Andrea Piazzolla.