By RACHEL DONADIO

GINA LOLLOBRIGIDA


“I think being an artist we live longer because we never become
old. It’s the thinking that is young.”


ROME - On a recent afternoon, Gina Lollobrigida stood at the entrance to her villa on the Appian Way. Sculptures, some her own creation, decorated the lawn.

Even at 81, she was unmistakable: her eyes still bright beneath industrial quantities of mascara, her curls hair-sprayed into a slightly unruly mass.“La Lollo,” as she is affectionately known in Italy, has filled out somewhat since her most dramatic entrance, perched atop a donkey in 1953’s “Bread, Love and Dreams,”barefoot, feisty and spilling out of her dress. But the million-dollar figure is still there, tucked that day into a tight black skirt and a tailored leopard-print vest.

Ms. Lollobrigida looked back on her life and work.“I think being an artist we live longer because we never become old,”she said in her charming English.“It’s the thinking that is young.”

No contemporary Italian actress, not even Monica Bellucci or Valeria Golino, has come close to the star status of La Lollo, Sophia Loren or Claudia Cardinale, who reigned supreme in the 1950s and ‘60s. Now Ms. Lollobrigida has reached the stage of lifetime achievement awards: the National Italian American Foundation honored her in Washington in September, and the Rome International Film Festival feted her last month.

She’s pleased, she said, but still surprised by her success.“In my career I did nothing to become what I am,” she said.“It was the public made me an actress.”

Although she appeared in dozens of films - including as Esmeralda in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (1956), with Anthony Quinn, and as the queen of Sheba in “Solomon and Sheba” (1959), with Yul Brynner - Ms. Lollobrigida has always been more a star than an actor.

With a full-figured beauty that communicated innocence and experience, La Lollo was the incarnation of an Italy that leapt after World War II from dire poverty to the glamour of the Dolce Vita years.

“La Lollo was a personality that outshone her work in the cinema; she was simply one of the most beautiful women in the world,” said Peter Bondanella, the author of “Italian Cinema: From Neorealism to the Present.”

Her best-known role remains her first, when she played “La Bersagliera,” a sassy peasant girl in “Bread, Love and Dreams.”“I create La Bersagliera, oh, Dio,” Ms. Lollobrigida said, adding the Italian reference to God for emphasis.“It fits me like a glove, the character,” she added.“It’s very full of fire. Was like me.”

In recent years Ms. Lollobrigida has turned to philanthropy, photography and sculpture. Her voice filled with emotion when she recalled the crowds at the opening of an exhibition she had in the summer in Pietrasanta, the Tuscan artists’ village where she has her studio. The day, she said, was one of the happiest of her life.

And what a life. An entire wall of Ms.Lollobrigida’s house is filled with photos of her meeting major figures of the second half of the 20th century: Salvador Dali, Ella Fitzgerald, Indira Gandhi, Mick Jagger, Vladimir Putin, Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Mother Teresa, John Wayne.

During her career, she worked with some of the biggest names in Hollywood.“I was never afraid of anyone!” Ms. Lollobrigida said.“I had guts like that!”

Ms. Lollobrigida flipped through a catalog of her recent sculpture, admiring her creations.“In the film, it’s the director that moves everything,”she said.“In the sculpture, I am my own boss.”