Oscar-winning Italian diva Sophia Loren in hospital after fall

Oscar-winning Italian film star Sophia Loren, one of the most famous movie divas of the 20th century, has undergone surgery after a fall in her home in Geneva, a spokesman said on Monday (Sept 25).

The spokesman told Reuters in an e-mail that an operation on Loren, 89, “went well and now she needs to rest and everything will be resolved”.

He gave no details, but said Italian media reports were correct.

The reports said she had an accidental fall in her home in Geneva on Sunday and suffered a broken hip.

Loren has won two Oscars, the first in 1961 for her tragic portrayal of a war-time mother in Vittorio De Sica’s neo-realistic classic La Ciociara (Two Women). The second was a career award in 1991.

Some of her most memorable and successful film were made with fellow Italian co-star Marcello Mastroianni, who died in 1996. She has also co-starred with Cary Grant, Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra and Paul Newman, among other 20th century film giants.

Her most recent starring role was in 2020’s La Vita Davanti A Se (The Life Ahead).

In it, she plays a former prostitute and Holocaust survivor who looks after children of working prostitutes in the southern Italian city of Bari and helps an orphaned Senegalese migrant boy who had robbed her.

It was directed by her son, Edoardo Ponti.

News of the fall and hospitalisation was first reported on the Facebook page of Sophia Loren Restaurant, a chain of venues that bears her name.

It said she had been planning to open a new one, the fourth in Italy, in Bari on Tuesday.