INTRODUCTION

HER STORY

QUOTES

The Oscar she won for Two Women was stolen from her Villa Marino by thieves. She sent the Academy sixty dollars and they mailed her a replacement.

She always has something red on her, even though it might be out of sight. she has always believed that red would bring her good luck and ward off negative, evil forces.

Noel Coward said of her, "Sophia should have been sculpted in chocolate truffles so the world could have devoured her."  She was never more flattered.

The two movies roles she was dying to do but couldn't, were Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Anna Karenina.

The only cream she uses is baby oil-- nothing else.

In 1955 the movie Gold of Naples made her Italy's top star, supplanting Gina Lollobrigida as the country's leading box-office attraction. The impressed Italian press dubbed 1955 the Year of Sophia.

Clark Gable is quoted as having said, "The girl makes you think all the wrong thoughts," in reference to Sophia.

She allegedly had affairs with Cary Grant, JFK, Peter Sellers, Omar Sharif, Gig Young, and Marcello Mastroianni.

In one of the most famous photos in Hollywood history, Sophia sits next to Jayne Mansfield and stares incredulously as she leans forward and pops out of her low-cut top, the photo ran in papers around the world.

Her first taste of glamour came at fourteen when she was crowned one of twelve "Princesses of the Sea" in a beauty contest - an honor for which she earned a railroad ticket to Rome, and 23,000 lira.

Received a custom-made, 14-karat-gold toilet seat on her 40th birthday from her husband, producer Carlo Ponti.

Was told her hips were too big, her nose too long ad her mouth too big when she attended her first screen test, but she refused to take anybody's advice and stayed as she was.

Derives great pleasure from rolling her bare feet over a wooden rolling pin while watching TV.

She didn't get on with Marlon Brando during the shooting of The Countess from Hong Kong (1966), especially after the day they were doing a love scene and he commented, "Did you know you have hairs up your nostrils?"

Grandma Luisa dubbed her 'Lella'. For the rest of her life, she was never called anything but Lella by her closest kin.

Was taken ill on a flight from Los Angeles to New York, and was rushed to hospital suffering cardio-vascular pain.

She arrived in a horse-drawn carriage to open the 150th Summer sale at London's Harrods department store in July 1999.

Was voted the sixth sexiest woman of the century in a poll of Playboy magazine's readers.

She may have been a voluptuous sex goddess as an adult, but as a skinny child she was nicknamed 'Stuzzicadente' (the toothpick).

Sophia is still the only performer ever to win an Oscar for a foreign-language film. She received an honorary Oscar in 1991 for Lifetime Achievement.

She served 18 days in prison in Italy in 1982 for tax evasion, which her accountant euphemistically referred to as 'a little error'.