Sofia Villani Scicolone was born on 20 September 1934 in Rome, but spent her childhood in Pozzuoli near Naples with her mother Romilda and her sister Maria. Her father, Riccardo Scicolone, never married her mother. The Second World War found the family in a poverty that had nothing in common with the red carpets of later years. Today, at 92, that same girl is Sophia Loren, one of the last living legends of classical cinema. The story between those two points is not a fairy tale. It is work.

It was her mother who saw the way out. She pushed her daughter into beauty contests, and at 14 Sofia began drawing attention. In 1950 she moved to Rome, first as an extra and in small parts. There she met the producer Carlo Ponti, the man who would be her mentor, husband and partner for the next five decades. The relationship was not simple, not even legally: married for the first time in 1957, the marriage was annulled in Italy, and they married legally in France only in 1966. Together they had two sons, Carlo Jr and Edoardo, and stayed together until Ponti's death in 2007.

The turning point came in 1960 with Vittorio de Sica's "Two Women", where Loren plays Cesira, a mother trying to protect her daughter in wartime. A role out of her own life, only under a different name. In 1962 it won her the Oscar for best actress, making her the first performer awarded for a film in a language other than English. Hollywood had its rules until then about who deserved a statuette, and one woman from Naples changed them.

Then came "Marriage Italian Style", "Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" and "A Special Day", and one of the most remembered screen pairings in Italy: Loren and Marcello Mastroianni. On the American side there was Cary Grant, with whom she made "The Pride and the Passion" and "Houseboat", then Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando and Gregory Peck. A career moving between Italy, France and the United States, at a time when a European actress rarely got a lead role across the ocean without giving up her accent.

In the seventies and eighties she deliberately slowed down to be with her children. Edoardo, a director and screenwriter, brought her back to the screen in 2020 in "The Life Ahead", one of the most celebrated of her returns. She has four grandchildren. In 1991 she received an honorary Oscar for her contribution to cinema, and in 1999 the American Film Institute placed her among the greatest stars in the history of American film.

Would a 14-year-old girl today from a poor town, with no father at home and no connections, have the same path? The answer depends on whether you believe talent is still enough. Loren had talent, a mother who did not give up and a producer who saw more than a face. That she turned all of it into 70 years of a career and two Oscars - that part was already hers.