The Italian star Sophia Loren, a film icon who has been honored with two Oscars in Hollywood, celebrates her 90th birthday tonight in Rome, just a few days before the French actress Brigitte Bardot, “two divas who redefined the image of femininity in the 20th century“, according to an Italian newspaper.

Born in the Eternal City on September 20, 1934, the unforgettable star of the film “A Special Day” (1977) will blow out her 90 candles during a private celebration, which will be organized in a luxury hotel in the historic center.

After an honorary event at a Rome cinema by the Cinecittà studios and the Ministry of Culture, the actress will meet with around 150 friends, colleagues and family members for a dinner on the roof of a hotel, where she is also expected to inaugurate a suite that will bear her name, as the newspaper Il Corriere della Sera writes.

For the occasion, Sophia Loren will be dressed by her close friend Giorgio Armani.

Today, Italy’s biggest newspapers turned on the career of Sophia Loren, the beautiful brunette with almond eyes, who had by her side in Hollywood the most important actors of the time, from Anthony Quinn to Clark Gable, but also Marlon Brando, Cary Grant, Peter Sellers, John Wayne or Frank Sinatra.

“Sophia Loren, the legend turns 90 years old“, writes Il Corriere in its headline, while the newspaper Il Messaggero honors “the (unexpected) icon of women’s rights”.

For its part, La Repubblica chooses to associate her with her French colleague Brigitte Bardot, who will turn 90 on September 28. “Exquisite nineties”, writes the newspaper, which praises “two divas who redefined the image of femininity in the 20th century”.

Sophia Loren also received a message from the country’s president, Sergio Mattarella, who hailed her “elegance, her charm and the incomparable qualities of her performance”, as well as her “impressive career, marked by her award of many national and international awards”.

Sophia Loren’s 90th birthday will also be celebrated by a retrospective at Lincoln Center in New York.

At the same time, the state-owned Rai TV has scheduled the screening of its films. Tonight on Rai3 the film “Marriage alla Italica” (in a new reissue) with Marcello Mastroianni will be screened to coincide with a series of anniversaries: the 60th anniversary of the film, its release in 1964, the 100th anniversary of his birth Mastroianni (September 26, 1924) and the 50th anniversary of the death of its director Vittorio de Sica (1974).

A legend of the 7th Art, widowed after the death of her husband, the producer Carlo Ponti in January 2007, Sophia Loren returned to the Italian small screen in 2010 in a telefilm about her life, where she played her own mother.

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Her last film appearance was in 2020 in the film “Life in front of you”, an adaptation of Romain Gary’s novel, directed by her son Eduardo Ponti.