Gina Lollobrigida obituary

Film actor of the 1950s and 60s who went from early Italian roles to become an international star

The actor Gina Lollobrigida, who has died aged 95, was one of the great film stars of the 1950s and 60s, and an icon of Italian cinema who became known as “the most beautiful woman in the world”.

The movie that launched her as a sex symbol was Altri Tempi (Infidelity, 1952), an anthology film directed by Alessandro Blasetti, in which Vittorio De Sica was the lawyer who defends the honour of a woman (Lollobrigida) accused of being too sexy. She was signed up the following year to play opposite Errol Flynn in Crossed Swords and in what was to become a cult movie, John Huston’s tongue-in-cheek adventure yarn Beat the Devil, in which she co-starred with Humphrey Bogart and Jennifer Jones.