Rip Gina Lollobrigida

There are so many celebrities I look up on the web only to find out they died a while ago at a young age. Then there are superstars like Gina who I had no idea were still around, whose acting career ended over 50 years ago, yet whose fame still lasts.

Here are some excerpts on her bio:

Gina was born in 1927 and had an acting career during the 50s and 60s. Her first 3 year acting contract was with Howard Hughes in 1950 which ended in disputes because she refused to honor the terms requiring her to shoot some films in the states (she refused to leave Europe.) She had the right to shoot American films in Europe, and Hughes tried to make it difficult by threatening to sue any production company that hired her. (Perhaps Howard learned a lesson regarding trying to force a 23 year old Italian woman to do something she did not want to do.)

By the end of the 1970s, Lollobrigida had embarked on a successful second career as a photographic journalist. She photographed, among others, Paul Newman, Salvador Dalí, Henry Kissinger, David Cassidy, Audrey Hepburn, Ella Fitzgerald, and the German national football team. In 1974 she managed to obtain an exclusive interview with Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

In the mid-1980s, she starred in 5 episodes of the television series Falcon Crest in a role originally written for Sophia Loren (currently living in Switzerland at age 88), who had turned it down.

In 1999, Lollobrigida unsuccessfully ran for election to the European Parliament as a candidate for The Democrats.

[This is a really incomplete version of weird events from Wiki, but it’s interesting so I’ll post it]
In October 2006, at age 79, she announced her engagement to a 45-year-old Spanish businessman, Javier Rigau i Ràfols. They had met at a party in Monte Carlo in 1984 (she was 57 at the time and he was 23) and had since become companions. The engagement was called off, reportedly because of the strain of intense media interest, but they married in Spain late that year. In January 2013 (6 years later) she started legal action against Javier Rigau i Ràfols, claiming that he had staged a secret ceremony in which he "married" an imposter pretending to be her at a registry office in Barcelona. She said he intended to lay claim to her estate after her death. In March 2017, she lost her court action, but subsequently said that she would appeal. I've read nothing about any estate disputes now that she is deceased (nor did I read anything inferring a mental decline that would have caused her to make such an accusation, if it were untrue.) She has one child...a son by a prior marriage (born 1957.)

Riposa in Pace

 

Same goes for Sophia Loren, huh?

 

Done.