Born into a working-class background, Gina Lollobrigida attended an artistic high school and entered the Miss Italia beauty contest in 1947, finishing third (after Lucia Bosé and Gianna Maria Canale). After several small parts, she came to public notice in films such as "Flesh Will Surrender (Il delitto di Giovanni Episcopo)" (1947) by Alberto Lattuada and "Campane a martello" (1949) by Luigi Zampa. In the early 1950s, she built up her reputation with a series of films in Italy and abroad, from "Fan-Fan the Tulip (Fanfan la Tulipe)" (1951) by Christian-Jacque and "Beauties of the Night (Le belle della notte)" (1952) by René Clair to "Infidelity (Altri tempi)" (1952) by Alessandro Blasetti and "The Wayward Wife (La provinciale)" (1953) by Mario Soldati, which saw her in one of her finest performances as the unhappy adulteress Gemma. 

But it was not until the diptych "Bread, Love and Dreams (Pane amore e fantasia)" (1953) and "Bread, Love and Jealousy (Pane amore e gelosia)" (1954) by Luigi Comencini that she rose to stardom. This marked the beginning of the genre of "romantic neorealism", followed by the comedy genre in the subsequent decade. The sanguine and provocative figure of Maria "la Bersagliera", a young, easy-going working-class beauty, disturbed the respectability of post-war Italy in the period between reconstruction and boom. In these films, both the middle-aged marshal of the Carabineri Vittorio De Sica and the young northern Italian lance-corporal Roberto Risso fall head-over-heels in love with her. 

After rising to international stardom and appearing on the covers of both "Time" and "Life", "lollò" (as she was called by the French, a word meaning "beautiful breasts") continued to appear in acclaimed works such as "The World's Most Beautiful Woman (La donna più bella del mondo)" (1955) by Robert Z. Leonard, "Trapeze" (1956) by Carol Reed and "The Law (La legge)" (1959) by Jules Dassin. Nonetheless, she achieved her greatest success in Italian films, such as "Four Kinds of Love (Le bambole)" (1965), "That Splendid November (Un bellissimo novembre)" (1969) by Mauro Bolognini, "Me, Me, Me... and the Others (Io, io, io... e gli altri)" (1966) by Blasetti and in particular the rather uncharacteristic "Crazy Sea (Mare matto)" (1963) by Renato Castellani, where she is totally unrecognisable in the role of a landlady. 

In the 1970s she withdrew from the cinema to work as a photographer. She gave a particularly memorable performance as the Blue Fairy in Comencini's TV version of "Pinocchio" (1972).

Credit: italica.rai.it