Sophia Loren is 75!

Born Sofia Scicolone, Loren once described her young self as "a scarecrow of a girl buried in poverty." By the age of 15, however, she had developed the attributes that would make her famous. Encouraged by her mother to enter a Naples beauty pageant, she won second place. Heartened by this success, mother and daughter decided to decamp to Rome, where they hoped to pursue careers in modeling and acting.
Once in the big city, Loren modeled for lowbrow magazines until, one evening at a nightclub, she was introduced to Carlo Ponti, an Italian movie producer. Ponti, who would later become Loren's husband, helped her lose her Neapolitan accent, enroll in acting lessons and obtain small roles. Before long, she was getting job offers, and in 1953 she was cast in the leading role of Aida, above, in which she plays the fictional Ethiopian princess captured and put into slavery.

Aida catapulted Loren to stardom, and in the next few years, she would make more than 20 films, often working on more than one at a time. Enough of the films were exported to other countries to make her familiar to moviegoers all over Europe, leading Italian publicists to declare 1955 "the Year of Sophia."
Though she barely spoke English, Loren was hired to play the female lead opposite Cary Grant, left, and Frank Sinatra, right, in Stanley Kramer's 1957 release The Pride and the Passion. She would film three other movies for American studios in Europe before actually getting to California in 1957.

In the 1958 family film Houseboat — the first of seven films she made at Paramount — Loren portrays a socialite trying to escape an overprotective father. In a chance encounter, she meets a widower, played by Cary Grant, who is struggling to raise three children by himself.

Loren earned an Academy Award for her performance in 1960's Two Women, the story of a mother who struggles to survive during wartime. It was the first-ever Oscar given to a foreign actress in a foreign-language film.
As Loren journeyed from obscurity to international stardom, Carlo Ponti continued to serve as her manager and agent. In love with his protégé but married with two children, Ponti attempted to obtain a Mexican divorce from his wife so he could marry Loren. In a gigantic scandal, the Vatican refused to recognize the couple's Mexican marriage, and the authorities indicted the lovers as a "bigamist" and a "concubine." In an effort to resolve the problem, the couple moved to France, where they became citizens and remarried in 1967.

Loren and Ponti have two children: Carlo Jr., middle, born in 1968, and Eduardo, left, born in 1973.

The actress poses in her home's main living room, part of a 1964 Life magazine photo shoot.

In the 1964 epic The Fall of the Roman Empire, Loren plays Lucilla, an emperor's daughter who forgoes marriage to her beloved so that he might make a more politically expedient match. She was paid $1 million, an extremely high sum at the time, for her performance.

During the 1970s, Loren continued to work steadily, starring opposite the world's top leading men, like Richard Burton (The Voyage, 1974), Marcello Mastroianni (A Special Day, 1977) and Peter O'Toole, who plays Don Quixote de La Mancha to Loren's Dulcinea in the cinematic version of Man of La Mancha, above.

Well into her seventh decade as a professional actress, Loren remains in demand. Seen above at center, this fall she will appear alongside, from left, Judi Dench, Marion Cotillard, Penélope Cruz, Stacy (Fergie) Ferguson, Nicole Kidman and Kate Hudson in the screen adaptation of the musical Nine.

One of cinema's most beloved stars, Loren received a special Oscar in 1991. Many moviegoers would certainly share the opinion of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which, in its citation, declared Loren "one of the greatest treasures of world cinema, who, in a career rich with memorable performances, has added permanent luster to our art form."

The last one is a beautiful photography. Great had.