Sofia Loren and the Golden Age of Hollywood
Tuesday, October 21, 2025
“Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life." - Sophia Loren
Born Sofia Costanza Brigida Villani Scicolone in Rome, Italy on September 20, 1934, Sofia Loren captivated movie audiences worldwide for decades starting with her breakthrough role in Stanley Kramer’s The Pride and the Passion in 1957. Her co-stars were Frank Sinatra and Cary Grant, the latter of whom she had a torrid affair with during the making of the picture. Grant and Loren also starred together in Houseboat the following year, by which time their off-screen relationship had fizzled.
In 1959, Loren filmed It Started in Naples with Clark Gable, his final color picture and the last of his movies to be released during his lifetime. A year later, she won an Oscar for Best Actress in the Italian-language film Two Women. In 1961, Loren starred opposite Charlton Heston in the epic historical drama El Cid after which she was nominated for a second Academy Award in 1964 for Marriage Italian Style.
Speaking of marriage, Loren has had a very checked love life. She met Italian movie producer Carlo Ponti in 1950 when he was 37 and she was only 15. Their scandalous affair included a proxy marriage in Mexico seven years later, an annulment in 1962, another period of cohabitation, and an eventual marriage in 1967 once Ponti was able to obtain a legal divorce from his first wife. Despite these sexual shenanigans, Loren claims to be a professing – and a practicing – Roman Catholic.
At age 91, Loren is one of the last remaining stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood. She has lived in Geneva, Switzerland since 2006, but owns a ranch in Hidden Valley, California; an apartment in the Hampshire House building in Manhattan; a condo on Williams Island in South Florida; and a villa in Rome. In 2023, Loren underwent emergency surgery for a broken hip and femur as a result of a fall at her Geneva home.
In some ways, Sofia Loren has led a very charmed life and in others, a life that is to be pitied. I admire her willingness to admit her past mistakes because we all make them (see Romans 3:10-12). However, it is important to learn from those mistakes and not repeat them. That is what true repentance is all about… turning away from your sins and turning instead to Jesus Christ.
I just hope and pray that Sofia Loren does exactly that before it is too late.
“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 6:23 (BSB)
- Rev. Dale M. Glading, President
