Gina Lollobrigida, the Italian siren who never settled for Hollywood, dies aged 95

Then, it was onto the inaugural ceremony where she described having 10 security guards to protect her and the gigantic Bulgari emeralds around her neck. The pictures show it clearly: petite Gina is totally surrounded by men. ‘It was at that moment that I thought, “who is the real diva? Me or the jewel?”’ she told me.

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Gina was nothing if not bold, vivacious and glamorous, but she was born into a much humbler life, in 1927 in Subiaco, a poor rural area east of Rome. Her family fled the area during the Second World War, and Gina was later sent to the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome to complete her education in sculpture. Her big break came in 1947 when she came third in the Miss Italia beauty contest.

Her rise to film star fame began in 1953 when she played in Mario Soldati’s The Wayward Wife, and Hollywood soon came calling. There, she starred alongside Humphrey Bogart in John Huston’s 1954 film Beat the Devil (1954) and opposite Frank Sinatra in Never So Few (1959). She achieved worldwide recognition for her role in Robert Z. Leonard’s The World’s Most Beautiful Woman (1955). But despite being renowned for work ethic, and after a spat with the director Howard Hughes (much later, she claimed that Hughes had tried to force her to divorce her husband and marry him), Gina brought her talents back to Italy, where she remained.

She was known to be extremely litigious – she once won $72,000 from a New York restaurant after a hard object in her food caused her tooth to chip – and for tabloid rivalries. In 2015, she told Vanity Fair that Sophia Loren ‘and her press agents started this “rivalry” with me—and she hasn’t stopped for 50 years.’ Although today, Loren said in a statement that she is ‘deeply shaken and saddened’ by La Lollo’s death.

Her love life, too, was of much press intrigue. After divorcing Skofic, her manager who she married in 1950 and remained with for 17 years, she said: ‘Marriages are boring and almost always like funerals, and couples so often restrict each other too much.’ In 2006, when she was 79, she reportedly wed Javier Rigau y Rafols, a boyfriend 34 years her junior, but it was annulled in 2019.

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Like her American counterpart Elizabeth Taylor, La Lollo had a particular admiration for gobstopper jewels: particularly diamond emeralds from Bulgari. In 2013, she auctioned dozens of her pieces at Sotheby’s Geneva, including a diamond bracelet and necklace set that she used to wear as a tiara to Hollywood parties.

The original European sex symbol, followed by rivals Sofia Loren and Brigitte Bardot, Lollobrigida became as much of a fashion icon for her tight bodices and hourglass silhouettes (she was envied for her 35-22-36 figure). She told me designing her own dresses was a passion: ‘I wore a satin dress designed by myself (it was one of my hobbies). I was working on the movie Imperial Venus at the time, so I designed the dress to match the empire theme and stimulate some buzz.’ It was a low-cut scoop neck dress with a bow: totally Gina.

She endures as a style icon, like her contemporaries. Janty Yates, who designed costumes for Ridley Scott’s 2021 film House of Gucci, told The Hollywood Reporter some of Lady Gaga’s outfits were inspired by La Lolla. ‘Ridley [Scott] wanted Lady Gaga to look more like Gina Lollobrigida than Joan Collins of Dynasty, so basically we looked at all the photos of Gina in her prime in the ’60s, and I did a later-’70s version of the lace dress.’

One of the original multi-hyphenates, La Lollo was a sculptor, painter, photographer and writer in her lifetime. Her book Italia Mia, spent months on the American bestseller list. And her level of glamour? It might never be rivalled, for she is the siren that packed a punch with big Mambo Italiano energy and cascades of diamonds.

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