Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida dies aged 95
Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida has died at the age of 95, according to ANSA news agency.
She was one of the highest-profile European actresses of the 1950s and early 1960s, playing opposite Hollywood stars including Humphrey Bogart, Rock Hudson, Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis and Frank Sinatra.
Lollobrigida with Tony Curtis in Trapeze, in 1956. Pic: Snap/Shutterstock
Starting out from humble beginnings, she became one of the most recognisable faces of Italian post-war cinema.
An international sex symbol – rivalled only by fellow Italian actress Sophia Loren – Lollobrigida was one of the last of the last remaining stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
Her former lawyer, Giulia Citani, said she died at a clinic in Rome, but did not give her cause of death.
Affectionately known in her native Italy simply as “La Lollo”, she starred in films including The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, Solomon and Sheba, Beautiful But Dangerous and The World’s Most Beautiful Woman during her five-decade acting career.
Eventually stepping away from the movie world, Lollobrigida found success as a photographer and sculptor in later life, also venturing into the world of politics.
In 1975, rumours swirled that she had had an affair with Cuban leader Fidel Castro, after she secured exclusive access to him for a documentary she produced.
She later made headlines in 2006, when aged 79, she announced she was marrying a man 34 years her junior. She later called off the wedding, blaming the media for spoiling it.
Lollobrigida with Yul Brynner in Solomon And Sheba, in 1959. Pic: Moviestore/Shutterstock
Just last September, she failed in a bid to win a seat in the Italian parliament for Sovereign and Popular Italy (ISP), a leftist political party at national elections, after they failed to reach the 3% electoral threshold.
In 1975, rumours swirled that she had had an affair with Cuban leader Fidel Castro, after she secured exclusive access to him for a documentary she produced.
She later made headlines in 2006, when aged 79, she announced she was marrying a man 34 years her junior. She went on to call off the wedding, blaming the media for spoiling it.
Lollobrigida with Anthony Quinn in Hunchback Of Notre Dame in 1957. Pic: Snap/Shutterstock
When she was 80, she said in an interview: “All my life I wanted a real love, an authentic love, but I have never had one. No one has ever truly loved me. I am a cumbersome woman”.
Born to a working-class family in Subiaco, a poor mountainous area east of Rome, Lollobrigida initially studied sculpture, but got her break in the film world after finishing third in the 1947 Miss Italia beauty contest.
One of her earliest screen roles was playing an adulteress in 1953 film The Wayward Wife. Leading roles in two Italian comedies directed by Luigi Comencini, Bread, Love and Dreams, and Bread, Love and Jealousy followed.
Lollobrigida at the Beverly Hills hotel in Los Angeles in 1959. Pic: AP
A role opposite Humphrey Bogart in John Huston’s 1954 film Beat the Devil added to her exposure, but it was the 1955 movie The World’s Most Beautiful Woman – which became one of her signature roles – which sealed her worldwide fame.
Despite making it in Hollywood, she preferred to work closer to home, making films throughout the 1960s with Italian directors such as Mario Bolognini.
Her last big well-known film, the 1968 farce Buona Sera, Mrs Campbell, which also starred American actor Telly Savalas, earned her several award nominations.
Born Luigia Lollobrigida on 4 July, 1927, she studied at Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, before working as a model under the stage name Diana Loris.
Tempestuous and impulsive by nature, her on-screen success was accompanied by intense interest from Italian paparazzi and gossip writers.
At one point, in a bid to guard her private life, she retreated to an isolated villa on Rome’s ancient Appian Way.
In 1950 she married the Yugoslavian doctor Milko Skofic, who later became her manager. The couple had one son, Milko Junior.
They separated after nearly 17 years, with Lollobrigida saying at the time she had no intention of remarrying.
Pic: Lollobrigida pictured in the 1980s. Baril Pascal/ABACA/Shutterstock
However, in 2006, she announced her she would be marring close friend Javier Rigau, a Spanish man 34 years her junior.
Months later, she called off the wedding, saying that the media coverage had ruined her life with “endless attacks, slander and violence”.
She later said in an interview with Reuters that she felt responsible for Rigau’s suffering, after the Spanish media labelled him an opportunist. In contrast, she said she was “more used to having falsehoods written about me”.
A woman who was charged with selling Friends star Matthew Parry the dose of the drug that killed him has agreed to plead guilty.
Jasveen Sangha, known as the “Ketamine Queen”, is the fifth and final defendant to strike a plea deal with prosecutors, avoiding a trial that was set to take place in September.
The 42-year-old agreed to plead guilty to five federal criminal charges, including providing the Ketamine that led to Perry’s death, federal prosecutors said in a statement.
She agreed to plead guilty to five federal criminal charges, including providing the Ketamine that led to Perry’s death, federal prosecutors said in a statement.
Prosecutors had cast Sangha, a dual US and UK national, as a prolific drug dealer known to her customers as the “Ketamine Queen”, often using the term in court documents and even including it in the official name of the case.
Actor Matthew Perry in 2015. File pic: Reuters
She agreed to plead guilty to one count of maintaining a drug-involved premises, three counts of distribution of ketamine, and one count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death or serious bodily injury.
Sangha will officially change her plea to guilty at an upcoming hearing, where sentencing will be scheduled, prosecutors said.
Dr. Mark Chavez, a physician from San Diego, who is charged in connection with Matthew Perry’s fatal overdose. Pic: AP
She is facing up to 45 years in prison.
Sangha and a doctor named Salvador Plasencia, who signed his own plea deal in June, had been the primary targets of the investigation.
Three other defendants – Mark Chavez, who it was claimed bought the drug from Sangha, Kenneth Iwamasa, and Erik Flemin – agreed to plead guilty last year in exchange for their cooperation, which included statements implicating Sangha and Plasencia.
Friends became one of the most popular TV shows in the world in the 1990s and 2000s
Prosecutors allege Chavez funnelled ketamine to Plasencia, securing some of the drug from a wholesale distributor through a fraudulent prescription.
In one instance, prosecutors allege that Plasencia “charged Perry $2,000 (£1,500) a vial that cost Dr Chavez approximately $12 (£9)”.
Perry died in his home in October 2023, aged 54, after getting ketamine from his regular doctor for treatment of depression, which is an increasingly common use for the surgical anaesthetic.
The actor was taking ketamine six to eight times a day before he died, according to court documents.
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An Ozzy Osbourne documentary has disappeared from the BBC’s schedule without explanation.
The film was billed by producers as “a moving and inspirational account” of the last chapter of the metal legend’s life.
It was meant to air at 9pm on Monday on BBC One – as well as be available on iPlayer – but an episode of Fake Or Fortune? has replaced it.
Sky News has contacted the BBC for comment on why the programme, called Ozzy Osbourne: Coming Home, has been pulled.
The project was filmed over three years as Ozzy and his family returned to the UK, and was initially conceived as a series entitled Home to Roost.
However, as the singer’s health got worse it morphed into a one-off.
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The BBC reported the show would reveal the “extraordinary rollercoaster” of the Osbournes’ lives as Ozzy tries “heroically” to get fit enough to perform again.
It’s said to feature “unique and intimate access” to the family, including Ozzy’s children, Jack and Kelly, who appeared in the reality series that made them household names in the early 2000s.
The Black Sabbath frontman, who had Parkinson’s disease, died last month – just a few weeks after his final all-star gig at Birmingham’s Villa Park.
Fans packed the city centre and chanted his name when his hearse passed through on 30 July.
His wife, Sharon, was in tears as she got out to see the mass of flowers left for him at “Sabbath Bridge”.
The New York Times said his death certificate gave the cause as cardiac arrest, but the family hasn’t commented.
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