Sophia Loren has made a comeback to the film industry after a decade with the Netflix movie The Life Ahead, directed by her son, Edoardo Ponti.
In an interview with Closer, the 86-year-old screen icon expressed her deep trust in her son’s direction, saying, “He knows me so well. He knows every inch of my face, my heart, my soul.”
The Life Ahead features Loren as an elderly Holocaust survivor who forms an unlikely friendship with a young immigrant from Senegal on Italy’s Adriatic coast.
Edoardo Ponti expressed admiration for his mother’s dedication to her craft, saying, “The energy and passion with which she approaches every scene is a marvel to watch.” He added, “She wants to put it all on the line to make a movie that is so deep, so challenging, both emotionally and physically.”
The Life Ahead will premiere on Netflix in November. Sophia Loren, who resides in Switzerland, hopes to visit America that month to see her sons and grandchildren.
Loren previously gained international recognition for her role in the 1960 film Two Women, which also dealt with the impact of World War II in Italy.
Her performance in Vittorio De Sica’s Two Women made Sophia Loren the first actor to win an Academy Award for a role in a non-English language film.
Loren’s last appearance in a feature film was in Nine, Rob Marshall’s 2009 adaptation of the Broadway musical. Nine was inspired by Federico Fellini’s classic film 8 1/2, although Loren never collaborated with Fellini despite their contemporaneous careers.
Since Nine, Loren has continued to work, including dubbing a role in Italian for Pixar’s 2011 film Cars 2 and appearing in a short film.
A decade ago, Sophia Loren portrayed her own mother, Romilda, in the Italian miniseries My House Is Full Of Mirrors. The series was based on a book by her sister, Maria Scicolone, who was once married to Romano Mussolini, son of the infamous Italian dictator.
Sophia Loren has two sons, Carlo, 51, and Edoardo, 47, with her late husband Carlo Ponti, a film producer who was more than twenty years her senior. The couple first married in Mexico in 1957 while Ponti was separated from his first wife, Giuliana. Despite obtaining a Mexican divorce from Giuliana, the divorce was not recognized in Italy, where divorce only became legal in the 1970s.
To avoid charges of concubinage and bigamy in Italy, Sophia and Carlo annulled their marriage in 1962. They later moved to France, where they obtained citizenship, allowing Carlo to divorce Giuliana under French law in 1965. Carlo and Sophia remarried the following year and remained together until his death in 2007.
Their elder son, Carlo Jr., is an orchestra conductor, while their younger son, Edoardo, is a director. Edoardo’s debut film, Between Strangers, also featured his mother, Sophia Loren.
Sophia Loren, who has four grandchildren, shared with Closer that she stays connected with her family through daily FaceTime calls, especially during lockdown.
“My approach to life is very simple: Enjoy all the good news that my children tell me about their lives,” the Marriage Italian Style star said. Living in Geneva, where she gave birth to both of her sons, she added, “The beauty of my grandchildren fills me with joy although they are far away in California.”
A few years ago, she told the New York Times that she enjoys the tranquility of life in Switzerland. “It’s calm. When you live in a big city like Rome or like New York, there are so many things going on and the streets and the cars. Here, it’s a really very peaceful place. And then, of course, it’s the center of Europe.”
