ITALIAN legend Sophia Loren is the latest celebrity to earn herself a star on Almería's Walk of Fame – in a city she knows well after having filmed there in 1971.
Alberto Lattuada's Bianco, Rosso e..., which came out in English under two titles, White Sister and The Sin, is an Italian comedy released in 1973 and starred Loren as Sister Germana in what would become an instant commercial success.
The Cannes, BAFTA and Golden Globe winner, whose most famous productions include It Started in Naples, Houseboat alongside Cary Grant, Two Women, The Pride and the Passion and Marriage Italian-Style, says she has never studied acting and that 'either you feel it or you don't'.
Joining the likes of Ángela Molina and Catherine Deneuve, Loren's star was unveiled at Almería Film Festival and she was greeted with applause from thousands of fans at the Cervantes Theatre.
She thanked everyone in Almería for their kindness and warmth and for their tribute to her, which included the Almería Land of Film Award for lifetime achievement.
“I'd like to be able to talk to each and every one of you, but we'd take too long and we wouldn't be finished until tomorrow morning,” she said at the time.
But she wished everyone in the audience 'lots of luck for their children and grandchildren'.
Loren, when interviewed, said there was 'no recipe' for becoming a major figurehead in the cinema industry, but that in her case, she simply 'tried to put the most into' all her roles and tried to have a full story on them at her fingertips to be able to understand them.
“If something didn't really suit me, I wouldn't do it, I'd speak with the author and tell him or her,” she admitted.
Concerning her visits to Spain for filming, Loren, 83, said she was 'just a little girl' when she travelled to the country to shoot her role as Juana in The Pride and the Passion with world-famous crooner Frank Sinatra in 1957.
She was 23 years old at the time and, although she already had 36 films under her belt since the age of 17, said: “I arrived in Spain to make this film and was thrust before the cameras without being able to speak a word of English – I only spoke Neopolitan Italian.
“It was a tough moment, but turned out to be a great experience.
“I wasn't able to sing with Sinatra – they didn't suggest it to me!”
Sophia Loren took a moment to remember her great friend Lola Flores, talking to the Spanish actress' granddaughter Elena Furiase – an actress herself – who approached Loren to show her a photo on her mobile of the Italian with her grandmother Lola.
Loren said she was more into 'social films' than westerns, for which Almería has often been the setting, especially in the 1970s, adding: “Even though Sergio Leone has made some extraordinary films, I don't think they're a type of film I would have done.”
“Cinema changes with the time, just as history does, but I'm still working – it's marvellous,” Loren said.
“Sometimes things get forgotten, but when you see it on screen, if you've done it well, you appreciate what you've done.”
Sophia, who became the first Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film with Two Women and who won a second Lifetime Achievement Oscar, was, naturally, asked about the secret of staying beautiful all her life, including into her 80s.
“If it's a secret, it's going to stay a secret,” she laughed, but added that both her parents, Riccardo Scicolone and Romilda Villani, were 'naturally beautiful' and that her mother was often stopped in the street.
Sophia's last full-length film was in 2009, where she played Mamma in Nine and amassed several award nominations, although the following year she played her own mother in the TV miniseries My House is Full of Mirrors and was the lone star of the one-woman short film La Voce Umana ('The Human Voice') presented at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival.
Photograph 1: Sophia Loren at this year's Almería Film Festival
Photograph 2: Poster for The Sin, or Bianco, Rosso e..., filmed in Almería in 1971
Photograph 3: Sophia Loren dancing in It Started in Naples
Photograph 4: Houseboat, starring Sophia Loren and Cary Grant with the children played by Mimi Gibson, Paul Petersen and Charles Herbert
