Gina Lollobrigida, byname of Luigina Lollobrigida, (born July 4, 1927, Subiaco, Italy died January 16, 2023, Rome, Italy), Italian actress and professional photographer whose earthy sexuality helped promote her to international film stardom in the 1950s and ’60s. Lollobrigida’s father was a furniture maker in Subiaco, but during World War II the family moved to Rome. Though she studied painting and sculpture, her modeling career under the name Diana Loris helped bring her to the attention of Italian directors. In addition, she won a number of European beauty contests prior to her first motion-picture appearance, in Aquila nera (1946; Return of
With her large, limpid brown eyes, statuesque figure, and seductively deep voice, she was one of the world's best-known actresses and sex symbols in the 1950s and 1960s, especially in evergreen classics like "Come September" - but .