Born in the village of Ljutovnica near Gornji Milanovac to a Royal Yugoslav Air Force officer father Božidar Otašević and mother Olga,[1] young Ljubica grew up in Belgrade with a younger brother Duda.
Playing alongside her club teammates Gordana Baraga, Cmiljka "Cica" Kalušević, and Aleksandra Gec, Otašević appeared in six games at the competition, recording a total of 19 points (3.2ppg).
Several months later, during a short stay in England, the twenty-four-year-old got spotted by a Columbia Pictures producer and representative Carl Foreman who hired Otašević to be Sophia Loren's body double in the English film director Carol Reed's movie The Key starring Loren and William Holden that was filmed between July and December 1957 on various locations in England such as Henley-on-Thames, Isle of Portland, and Elstree Studios in Borehamwood.
[8][9] Due to Loren's absence from the set in the first days of shooting, Otašević reportedly appears in most of the frames where the character has her back to the camera or her face is not shown close-up.
By January 1959, he brought her to Hollywood, signing her to a contract with his production company that did business with Universal Pictures and enrolling her in acting classes with a view of jump-starting a movie career for his young lover.
For the next few years, they functioned as a prominent sports couple in the city of Belgrade, both wearing number 12 jerseys in KK Crvena zvezda's men's and women's teams, respectively, as basketball gained popularity throughout the post-war Yugoslav society.
[10] A great beauty by many accounts, Otašević attracted plenty of male attention, with reports of various prominent men — such as the JNA general Peko Dapčević, UDBA security operative Ratko Dražević [sr], and writer Ivo Andrić — coming to the Crvena Zvezda courts at Kalemegdan in order to watch her play.
[1] Soon after her 1957 move to Italy and appearance in The Key as Sophia Loren's body double, Otašević began a relationship with Hollywood movie star Cary Grant, twenty-eight years her senior and married to Betsy Drake at the time.
After getting married, the couple moved to Houston, Texas in order for di Portanova to try and collect his share of his late maternal grandfather's oil inheritance, which he eventually succeeded in doing.