The legendary actress gives her first U.S. interview about her long-awaited new film.
Sophia Lorenis having a a full-circle moment.
Now, nearly 60 years later, she’s working with another Ponti, director Edoardo, their son.
Illustration by EW; Photo: Antonio Calanni/AP/Shutterstock
This marks their third project and second feature film together.
“I love his way of directing me.”
Loren was, after all, the first actor to win an Oscar for a foreign-language performance.
Her vibrancy, essential to her stardom, comes through over the phone.
“It just happened,” she says.
“I wanted to be inspired and challenged.
I didn’t know any films that I wanted to do right away.”
What makes a film the right fit for her after all these years in the business?
“This is what people like: truth.”
Truth is what she’s still pursuing.
It’s something she learned fromTwo Womendirector Vittorio de Sica.
“I was playing a mother of a child of 13 or 14.
“Because otherwise, if you start to do difficult things, then it becomes something like a machine.
You have to look normal.
You have to look like what you really are.”
He also taught her the value of investing in a good script.
“But you could go for it and know that you are going to make it.”
The film pairs her with first-time actor Gueye, who Loren praises.
“He was a great partner [and] very in touch with his emotions.
He just did what he had to do.”
“Even if 100 years go by, it’s always there.
When you hear something on television about the war, you jump.
To film the moment, she sat on a rooftop in pouring rain for three hours.
“He likes me to suffer.”
“I’d work with him even if he wasn’t my son,” she reflects.
“I saw the scene and I couldn’t believe myself.”
After nearly 70 years of making movies, Loren has distilled these emotionally taxing moments to a simple maxim.
“You have to feel the moment and know yourself,” she says.
“When the moment is coming, just go.
Don’t think about anything else but what you have to do.”
“I love cinema so much.
I want to keep doing it forever,” she concludes.
I intend to make movies forever.”
