Some facts about Sophia Loren show different sides of this movie legend’s personality.

Sophia Loren’s father was from a noble family, so she could call herself a marioness. But he wasn’t there for her and didn’t support the family. She grew up poor and had to start working with her grandmother as a teenager.

Sophia says that she was teased a lot as a child for being born to a mother who was not her biological mother. She was teased for being an “ugly duckling” until she was 14. 

But her bullies were proven wrong pretty quickly when she started competing in beauty pageants and doing very well. For her first contest, her grandmother made a dress out of a pink curtain because they couldn’t afford to buy a new one. In 1950, she won the title “Miss Elegance” at the Miss Italia pageant.

Sophia got her first role when she was only 16, and she played the main part in a movie when she was as young as 19. She used her first earnings to support her family, for example, paying for her sister to have her father’s name. She was born out of wedlock and felt ashamed because of that.

Sophia Loren won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the 1961 film Two Women. This was the first time an Academy Award was given for a performance in a foreign language or an Italian actress.

In 1981, she became the first female celebrity to launch her own perfume and a brand of eyewear.

Even when she was imprisoned 1982 for tax evasion, her popularity did not suffer. When she returned from prison, she was greeted by crowds of journalists and fans. In 2013, the highest court in Italy said she did not have to pay the taxes she was accused of not paying.

In 1991, the Academy awarded her an honorary award for her great contribution to the movie industry and named her “one of the world’s treasures in cinema.”

Sophia Loren is known for always looking naturally beautiful. After her very first screen test, a cameraman found her features too unusual, and advised her to lose weight and get a nose job. However, Sophia refused to let this negative comment affect her self-esteem.

Her confidence never left her. For example, she was not ashamed to have armpit hair showing on the red carpet. She believes that people should love and accept themselves as they are. She says there is too much pressure on women to look a certain way.