Gina Lollobrigida, known as the face of la dolce vida (Italian film), has died

Gina Lollobrigida, the high-spirited actor who had dual careers in Hollywood and Europe but may be more fondly remembered in her native Italy for jump-starting an era of celebration and indulgence after years of warfare and oppression, has died. She was 95.

Forever beloved in her homeland, Lollobrigida died in Rome, the Italian news agency Lapresse said, quoting Tuscany Gov. Eugenio Giani. Lollobrigida was an honorary citizen of a Tuscan town.

Her agent, Paola Comin, also confirmed her death but did not give details, the Associated Press reported.

Lollobrigida had surgery in September for a broken thigh bone after a fall. She returned home and said she had quickly resumed walking.

Lollobrigida’s rise to stardom was rapid. She made movies in Europe and the U.S., signed a long-term Hollywood contract with Howard Hughes, starred alongside Yul Brynner, Frank Sinatra and Rock Hudson, kept company with Salvador Dali, Fidel Castro and pioneering heart surgeon Christiaan Barnard, and had a running drama-fest with countrywoman Sophia Loren, a rivalry so fierce one wondered whether there was enough oxygen in Italy for the two of them.

“I am fire. I’m a volcano. All the things I do, I do with passion, fire and strength,” she said in a 1994 interview with The Times. “That’s me.”

Born in Subiaco, Italy, in 1927 (though the actress sometimes claimed it was 1928), Lollobrigida was the second of four daughters of Giovanni and Giuseppina Lollobrigida. When Allied air attacks destroyed their home in the early days of World War II, the family fled to the urban core of Rome.

She was studying sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome when a talent agent spotted her and offered her a modeling and acting contract. When she was summoned to the Cinecitta studios, the hub of Italian cinema, she was offered 1,000 lire to sign.

“I told them my asking price was 1 million lire, thinking that would put a stop to the whole thing,” Lollobrigida told Vanity Fair in 2015. “But they said yes!”

Lollobrigida was cast in several movies filmed in Italy, including several for which she received no credit, before filming “Alina,” a melodrama in which Lollobrigida uses her beauty as her chief weapon in a dangerous smuggling operation. Among others, it caught the attention of Hughes, the eccentric businessman, aviator and maverick film tycoon.

He brought her to Hollywood and signed her to a seven-year deal, a pact that prohibited her from working with any American film studio. She never made a film with Hughes and, tired of his advances and erratic behavior, returned to Italy where her career bloomed.

In 1953 she returned to Hollywood and was paired Humphrey Bogart, Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis and many others..

As the Hollywood movie offers slowed, Lollobrigida returned to Italian cinema, though she did pick up a role in 1984 on the prime time soap opera “Falcon Crest” and made an obligatory appearance on “The Love Boat.”

Though she was often in the company of rich and famous men, she was married only once. Or so she claimed.

In 2010, a man more than three decades her junior claimed the two had wed in Barcelona. She disputed the claim, filed suit in Italy and Spain and vowed to launch “an international investigation.” The truth, wherever it might be found, was quickly swallowed up in legal disputes.

Lollobrigida is survived by a son, Milko Skofic Jr.

Billy Wilder poses with Gina Lollobrigida backstage at the 1960 Academy Awards.

(AMPAS)

Gina Lollobrigida signing autographs during the Cannes Film Festival in 1961.

(Anonymous / AP)