Sophia
Loren's
Advice:
Sophia loren was a picture of
breath-taking beauty as she ap
peared in a Roman bath scene on the
set of Samuel Bronston's $16,000,000
epic, "The Fall of the Roman Empire."
She was dressed in yards of white siU, her
coiffure had taken a hairdresser two hours to
perfect, and $150,000 worth of jewelry graced
her ears and neck.
Yet when Sophia finished the scene and walked
over to greet me, I couldn't help noticing what
I had observed whenever we have been together :
her appearance is anything but perfect. She's a
bit on the heavy Bide. Her nose isn't exactly
Roman or Grecian. Her chin is small, her neck
too thick, her lips too voluptuous.
And she's the first to admit it! "Even as a lit
tle girl I neverfelt pretty," she told me as we
left the film set for lunch at a Roman restaurant.
"I was too skinny then. People used to call me
atuzzicadenti, which means 'toothpick' in Italian.
I didn't look like the other girlB my age. And
today. Carlo (her husband, film producer Carlo
Ponti) tells me not to wear brilliant colors. He
says there's already too much of my body and
that I should underemphasize it. That's why he
prefers me in black dresses. I know that some
times women look at me and think to themselves,
What has she got?' "
Sophia insists that what is inside a person is
more appealing than what the eye can see and
her love for Carlo Ponti illustrates her point He
is a head shorter than Sophia, bald, overweight,
and almost twice her age. He can hardly be
classified as a romantic-looking individual, yet
Sophia's love for him is real or she would have
left him long ago.
NOT only does Sophia know her faults, but
she knows how to make virtues of them.
Capitalizing on her appearance is but one ex
ample of her inbred shrewdness.
"I never thought I was pretty, unless someone
told me I was. But I felt I could be interesting,"
she explained.
At first she went about it all wrong. "When
I wag in my early teens, I made myself up too
much. Too much powder. The lipstick was too
heavy, too dark. I know now that I was trying
to hide behind a mask. It took me years to re
alize that a woman who is overly made up does
it because she's basically unhappy. One day I
looked at myself carefully and decided my eyes
were my best feature, with emphasis aivay from
my mouth, my nose, my forehead."
Over the years, Sophia has perfected her eye
make-up to such a point that a rumor circulated
through Rome that she had undergone an opera
tion to slant her eyes in the catlike fashion that
is her trademark!
While Sophia readily admits she is a bit over
weight, it doesn't worry her. Another well
endowed Italian actress once remarked that So
phia had a neck like a giraffe. When told about
it, Sophia smiled, "I like animals, don't you?"
Another time, when cautioned about her love
for spaghetti (which she likes to wash down with
red wine), Sophia came back with, "Don't you
know that everything you see I owe to spaghetti?"
Curiously enough, since she doesn't feel re
stricted by her weight, no one else minds it,
either. But it made her more aware of how to
walk, sit, and move. She has learned to carry
herself gracefully and, if necessary,, majesti
cally. A thinner Sophia would have been no
match for Charlton Heston in "El Cid" and she
all but physically eclipsed bony, lanky Tony Per
kins in "Five Miles to Midnight"
That Sophia knows her good angles and how
to get the most out of them is apparent to any
one who has ever worked with her. A still pho
tographer told me how Sophia once insisted she
be photographed near a window so she could
constantly check her appearance through her
reflection in the glass. "Once I saw her running
around the set adjusting light filters," the same
photographer recalled. "She knows lighting
just as well as any professional cameraman."
Make
Your
Faults
But Sophia is too smart in her relationship
with photographers to offend them. She knows
there are two things they can't stand: to have
an actress "pose" for them and to be blamed
for bad pictures that appear in print A story
once circulated in Hollywood about how Marlene
Dietrich supposedly told a photographer that his
pictures didn't turn out as well as they used to.
He answered, "I'm sorry, ma'am, but the last
time I took your picture I was 20 years younger."
Sophia would never be caught in such a situation.
She issued an edict that accredited photog
raphers could shoot all the pictures they wanted
of her provided she okayed the proofs. For in
stance, while Sophia and I lunched together, a
photographer kept snapping pictures. Sophia was
gulping down spaghetti as if it were her last
meal hardly a complimentary pose! But who
knows? Out of the 20-some pictures taken, one
might show the earthiness for which Sophia has
become famous without revealing unflattering
angles. No wonder she has become the darling
of photographers! And no wonder her pictures
are more relaxed, more natural than those of
most stars and that they get the widest possible
circulation !
Another shortcoming which Sophia has turned
to good advantage is her lack of a formal edu
cation. She had only nine years of schooling, and
during the early days of her career she felt em
barrassed about it. "I used to laugh too loud and
talk too much because I was ashamed to expose
what I didn't know. But gradually I realized that,
when I admitted what I didn't know or simply
kept quiet, people went out of their way to ex
plain things." Rather than think of her as ig
norant they were flattered by her eagerness to
listen to them particularly men!
"I became a sponge," she recalled. "I tried to
soak up information from everyone and every
place." Today she can hold her own in conversa
tions with almost anyone.
Carlo Ponti probably has received more than
his share of credit for Sophia's success. True, he
discovered her for the movies after she won a
Naples beauty contest and worked as a movie
extra and photographers' model. But Sophia her
self not only knows what is good for her but
whom to listen to.
During her early days of stardom, Sophia was
known only as a sex goddess who invariably
emerged from oceans, rivers, or lakes with her
clothes clinging tightly to her body, breathing
heavily, her mouth open seductively. The result
was good box office and terrible reviews.
She knew that her career would go downhill
once she reached the end of her twenties (she
is 29 now). To survive, she had .to concentrate
on becoming a professional actress.
In the mid-1950s she decided to take acting
lessons. "Don't you dare!" cried Vittorio de Sica,
the actor-director who is a good friend of Ponti's.
"What you need is a good script and direction.
Just be yourself, be natural, and everything will
be all right."
A few months later he proved his point when
he directed her in "Gold of Naples," which be
came her first real hit as an actress. And of
course it was de Sica's direction that helped her
win an Academy Award for her performance
in "Two Women." In that film, she wore no make
up, her hair was tousled as though it had been
stirred with a stick, and her long legs (her best
feature other than her eyes) were covered by
long, droopy socks.
Your
Virtues!
Another actress said she
looks like a giraffe but
Sophia doesn't let a few
shortcomings keep her from
being one of the world's
most exciting, exotic women
By PEER J. OPPENHEIMER
6 Family WMkly. Noumber 10, 1963